Following antitrust scrutiny, Microsoft has decided to discontinue bundling its Teams videoconferencing service with its Office suite.
On Monday, the IT behemoth announced that Teams will no longer be included in Office subscription packages purchased beginning this week. After deciding to divide the two products in Europe last year, Microsoft will now begin selling them separately globally.
That came about as a result of a formal investigation launched by the European Union’s executive commission, the chief antitrust body for the 27-nation union, due to allegations that the firm unfairly benefits from bundling Teams with Office.
Laptops 1000The popular office messaging software firm Slack Technologies submitted a complaint in 2020, which set off the probe.
Salesforce, the company that makes business software, owns Slack. Slack claimed that Microsoft was illegally integrating Teams with its Office suite, which consists of Word, Excel, and Outlook, to abuse its market dominance and eliminate competition, violating EU legislation.
