Microsoft first unbundled Teams from its Office suites in October in the European Union and now will reportedly make the move global.
Microsoft will separate its messaging app Teams from its Office products globally, according to an exclusive report by Reuters.
The move comes six months after Microsoft unbundled Teams and Office 365 in the European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland after the European Commission launched a formal antitrust investigation into the company.
The Commission said last July 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 EEA and Switzerland.
Microsoft also said it would create new resources and enhance “existing resources on interoperability” to help third-party companies.
Euronews Next has reached out to Microsoft for comment.