Microsoft will not bundle Teams with Office after facing antitrust scrutiny – National Achi-News

Microsoft will stop bundling its Teams video conferencing app with its Office software after the practice attracted antitrust scrutiny.

The tech giant said Monday that customers who buy Office subscriptions starting this week won’t get Teams bundled with the service. Microsoft will begin selling the two products separately worldwide, following last year’s move to separate the products in Europe.

That was after the executive commission of the European Union, the main competition enforcer of the 27-nation bloc, opened a formal investigation into concerns that bundling Teams with Office gives the company an unfair advantage over competitors.

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The investigation was triggered by a complaint filed in 2020 by Slack Technologies, maker of popular workplace messaging software.

Slack, which is owned by business software maker Salesforce, claimed that Microsoft was abusing its market dominance to eliminate competition – contrary to EU laws – by illegally combining Teams with its Office suite, which includes Word, Excel and Outlook.