Microsoft separates Teams from the Office suite to avoid abuse of dominant position

To avoid a trial for abuse of dominant position, Microsoft decided to withdraw Teams of its Office suite. One more step in this direction, since this was already the case for Switzerland and the European Union.

To be able to use Teams, you will now have to want to. And pay for it. The video service, added free of charge to the Office suite in 2017, had been in the sights of its competitors for several years, who considered it an unfair advantage.

Microsoft, which has experienced (and lost) its share of lawsuits in this area in recent years, is therefore trying to save the furniture on a global scale here, after having done so in Europe a few months ago. But not sure that this is enough.

Avoiding an antitrust lawsuit, one more

Lawsuits for unfair competition and abuse of dominant position are now commonplace for tech giants. Microsoft knows something about this, having not really escaped it over the last 10 years, mainly in Europe, but more generally on a global scale. So, the company decided this 1^er April to release its videoconferencing tool, Microsoft Teams, from its Office suite. Teams appeared in the pack from 2017, but it was during the pandemic that the service experienced a jump in popularity. It was also around this time that competing services began to criticize the practice, believing it gave them an unfair advantage.

It was Salesforce which was the first to draw the line, filing a complaint with the EU from 2020. After dropping ballast in Europe, Microsoft has this time separated the products internationally. A spokesperson for the company said: “ For greater clarity for our customers, we are expanding the steps we took last year to separate M365 and 0365 in Europe and Switzerland globally. »

Microsoft is not taking too much risk

Microsoft has all the more interest in taking the lead before the justice system in its country imposes such a choice on it (and probably the fines that go with it) as Microsoft Teams has already reached an almost essential status. In fact, the European Union had already required the company last October to separate Teams from its Office suite, and the latter had complied. Since then, this change has had almost no effect on the rate of use of the videoconferencing tool on the Old Continent.

Despite its efforts, Microsoft will probably not escape being brought before a European court for abuse of dominant position. Because if Teams is no longer part of the suite and must be the subject of a separate subscription, the level of interconnection with Microsoft Office products constitutes unfair competition according to certain rival services. At the very least, the Redmond firm is showing its goodwill to European regulators. The company has paid out no less than 2.2 billion euros over the last 10 years in fines for abuse of a dominant position in the European Union alone.

Source : Reuters