EU reaches deal with Microsoft to unbundle Teams in Europe

Microsoft has reached an agreement with the European Commission to end a longrunning antitrust investigation into its practice of bundling the Teams collaboration app with Microsoft 365 and Office 365, the regulator said Friday. Under the settlement, Microsoft will offer versions of its productivity suites in the European Economic Area without Teams at a lower price and promise a series of interoperability and data portability measures intended to make it easier for rival collaboration tools to compete.

The Commission said it accepted legally binding commitments from Microsoft that will remain in force for several years, with some interoperability obligations scheduled to last longer. The settlement resolves complaints that began with a 2020 filing by Slack, now part of Salesforce, and was followed by a formal probe opened in 2023 and a separate 2024 complaint by German videoconferencing vendor alfaview.

As part of the package, Microsoft agreed to make Microsoft 365 and Office 365 available to customers without Teams at an appreciably lower price, allow customers holding longterm licences to switch to unsubscribed versions without Teams, and improve documentation and technical...