{"id":399124,"date":"2025-09-05T05:12:35","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T05:12:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/399124\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T05:12:35","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T05:12:35","slug":"microsoft-and-eu-to-settle-antitrust-case-involving-teams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/399124\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft and EU to Settle Antitrust Case Involving Teams"},"content":{"rendered":"

Microsoft<\/a> and the\u00a0European Union<\/a> have\u00a0reportedly reached a settlement in which the tech giant will avoid an antitrust fine by agreeing to sell its\u00a0Teams<\/a>\u00a0videoconferencing app separately from its\u00a0Office<\/a>\u00a0packages.<\/p>\n

In addition, the settlement, which is still in draft form, would require Microsoft to charge less for packages that don\u2019t include Teams and to improve interoperability with the software of its rivals, Bloomberg reported<\/a> Thursday (Sept. 4), citing unnamed sources.<\/p>\n

Neither the European Commission nor Microsoft immediately replied to PYMNTS\u2019 request for comment.<\/p>\n

According to the Bloomberg report, EU regulators decided to accept the settlement offer from Microsoft after receiving positive feedback on it from the company\u2019s customers and rivals.<\/p>\n

The decision is expected to be finalized within weeks, the report said.<\/p>\n

The reported settlement involves an EU investigation that\u00a0looked into whether Microsoft illegally bundled Teams with other products, per the report.<\/p>\n

The investigation began after a 2019 complaint by\u00a0Slack<\/a>, before that company\u2019s 2021 acquisition by Salesforce<\/a>, according to the report.<\/p>\n

When it was reported in July 2023 that the European Commission could formally charge Microsoft and investigate these\u00a0antitrust claims<\/a>, a Microsoft spokesperson told PYMNTS that the company was continuing \u201cto engage cooperatively with the commission in its investigation and are open to pragmatic solutions that address its concerns and serve customers well.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was reported at the time that Microsoft had offered in negotiations with the EU to stop forcing Office customers to have Teams automatically installed on their devices and that talks had broken down over the question of whether the company\u2019s proposed concessions would only apply to the EU or be implemented around the world.<\/p>\n

In August 2023, it was reported that Microsoft had responded<\/a> to the EU\u2019s\u00a0antitrust\u00a0concerns by announcing it would start unbundling Teams from its Office and Microsoft 365 suites for customers in the European Economic Area and Switzerland.<\/p>\n

Reuters\u00a0reported<\/a> in May that the European Commission was leaning toward accepting Microsoft\u2019s revised proposal to address competition concerns over its bundling practices and avoid a potentially significant antitrust fine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At that time, the European Commission was preparing to launch a market test that would involve soliciting feedback from both Microsoft\u2019s competitors and its enterprise customers before the regulator reached a final verdict.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Microsoft and the\u00a0European Union have\u00a0reportedly reached a settlement in which the tech giant will avoid an antitrust fine…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399125,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[2000,299,5187,7900,507,12,3279,10938,53,3281],"class_list":{"0":"post-399124","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-european","11":"tag-legal","12":"tag-microsoft","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-pymnts-news","15":"tag-teams","16":"tag-technology","17":"tag-whats-hot"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115149979340627177","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}