The commitments made by the US tech giant to unbundle Teams from its flagship applications will bind it for between seven and 10 years.
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The European Commission on Friday accepted the concessions proposed by Microsoft concerning its Teams platform Teams to resolve an antitrust case it has been entangled in since July 2023.
To allay charges of abuse of dominance, Microsoft has proposed to offer customers its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 applications without Teams at a lower price than the suites including Teams and committed not to offering discount rates on Teams higher than those offered on suites without Teams.
It also offered interoperability to competitors with certain Microsoft products and proposed to allow customers to extract their Teams messaging data for use in competing solutions.
The case was opened in July 2023 following complaints from competing office platform Slack and in 2024 from Alfaview, accusing Microsoft of abusing its dominant position by bundling Teams with its Office and Microsoft 365 suites.
In June 2024, the Commission made a preliminary finding that the US tech giant was abusing its dominant position in the professional software market.
A year later, the Commission launched a market test on commitments offered by Microsoft which lead Slack and Alfaview to withdraw their complaints.
“Organisations big and small across Europe and around the world rely heavily on videoconferencing, chat and collaboration tools, especially since the coronavirus pandemic,” EU competition commissioner Teresa Ribera said in a statement, adding that the decision “opens up competition in this crucial market, and ensures that businesses can freely choose the communication and collaboration product that best suits their needs.”
The Commission’s decision makes Microsoft’s commitments binding for seven years and for 10 years regarding interoperability and data portability.
“We turn now to implementing these new obligations promptly and fully,” Nanna-Louise Linde, Vice President of Microsoft’s European Government Affairs, said in a statement.
If the company fails to meet its commitments, the Commission could impose a fine of up to 10% of its global annual revenue.