Microsoft first unbundled Teams from its Office suites in October in the European Union and now will reportedly make the move global.
ADVERTISEMENTMicrosoft will separate its messaging app Teams from its Office products globally, the company said, six months after it unbundled the services in Europe.
In a statement sent to Euronews Next, a Microsoft spokesperson said that extending the measure globally would "ensure clarity for our customers".
"Doing so also addresses feedback from the European Commission by providing multinational companies more flexibility when they want to standardise their purchasing across geographies," the statement continued.
The global extension of the measure was first reported by Reuters on Monday.
The change came after the European Commission launched a formal antitrust investigation into the company last July.
The Commission said it was "concerned that Microsoft may grant Teams a distribution advantage" by not letting customers choose whether to include Teams when they subscribe to Microsoft 365.
Microsoft "may have limited the interoperability between its productivity suites and competing offerings," the Commission added.
The antitrust investigation was related to a complaint from the communication platform Slack, now owned by Salesforce, filed in 2020 that alleged Teams was illegally bundled with Microsoft's productivity suites.
A month after the Commission announced the antitrust investigation, Microsoft said they would sell Microsoft 365 at a lower price without Teams included in the European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland.
Microsoft also said it would create new resources and enhance "existing resources on interoperability" to help third-party companies.
This story has been updated to include a statement from Microsoft.
