Photo credit © Reuters
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Microsoft will separate its Teams discussion and videoconferencing application from its Office offering globally, the American tech giant announced on Monday, six months after doing the same in Europe in order to avoid a fine from the part of the European Commission which ensures the proper functioning of competition rules.
The European Union (EU) opened a formal investigation last year following a complaint filed in 2020 by Slack, a business messaging app owned by Salesforce.
Teams, added free to the Office 365 offering in 2017, gradually replaced Skype for business calls and became extremely popular during the coronavirus pandemic thanks to its videoconferencing offering.
The computer company’s rivals argued the offer gave Microsoft an unfair advantage. The company began selling the two products separately in the EU and Switzerland from October 1 last year.
Read also…
“To ensure clarity for our customers, we are extending the steps we took last year to unbundle Teams from M365 and O365 in the European Economic Area and Switzerland to our customers around the world,” a spokesperson said. -Microsoft speech.
“In doing so, we are also responding to comments from the European Commission by providing multinational companies with greater flexibility when they wish to standardize their purchases across different geographies.”
Microsoft announced in a blog post the introduction of the Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites without Teams in regions outside the European Economic Area and Switzerland.
Customers can continue with their current offer, renew it, update it or change their offer from April 1.
The stakes are high for Microsoft. The company has racked up €2.2 billion in EU fines over the past decade for linking or bundling two or more products. The group has since sought to take a more conciliatory approach with regulators.
(French version Zhifan Liu)
©2024 Thomson Reuters, all rights reserved. Reuters content is the intellectual property of Thomson Reuters or its third party content providers. Any copying, republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. “Reuters” and the Reuters Logo are trademarks of Thomson Reuters and its affiliated companies.