Six months after it unbundled the Teams app from the Office package, Microsoft is doing the same for everyone worldwide, as announced this week.
This move is to appease the EU, of it’s ongoing investigation on the Redmond company, which was accused of gaining an unfair advantage by bundling apps. New customers subscribing to the Office suite and the standalone Teams app will see revised prices starting this week.
Microsoft Teams as a Standalone App
After a strong push by the EU, Microsoft is finally unbundling the Teams app from it’s Office suite, allowing users to subscribe to either of those in specially crafted plans from April 2024.
This move is a result of the ongoing investigation by the EU, which is investigating Slack’s claim of Microsoft bundling Office and Teams. giving the company an unfair advantage in competition.
Though Microsoft added Teams to the Office 365 suite in 2017, it picked up popularity during the COVID-19 period, which pushed everyone to rely on video conferencing apps for communication. Subsequently, Microsoft replaced Skype for Business with Teams and has been adding new features ever since.
But with the EU’s investigation, Microsoft started selling the Teams app and Office 365 as two separate products in the EU and Switzerland – which it now expands to everyone. Speaking of this, a Microsoft spokesperson said,
“To ensure clarity for our customers, we are extending the steps we took last year to unbundle Teams from M365 and O365 in the European Economic Area and Switzerland to customers globally.”
“Doing so also addresses feedback from the European Commission by providing multinational companies more flexibility when they want to standardise their purchasing across geographies.”
Despite all this, Microsoft may still not be able to avert the EU’s antitrust investigation, as the body has a history of screwing companies despite agreeing to an early surrender. Microsoft, in the last decade had paid 2.2 billion euros ($2.4 billion) in EU antitrust fines, and may attract a 10% fine from its global revenue if penalized under the new DMA.
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