Microsoft files formal EU settlement offer to end Teams bundling probe, expands unbundling and interoperability commitments
Enzo Reno ·
Microsoft on Wednesday submitted binding commitments to the European Commission to settle the antitrust case over bundling Teams with Microsoft 365 in the European Economic Area, and outlined additional global changes to pricing and interoperability. The filing, made in Brussels, seeks to close a probe that began after Slack’s 2020 complaint, and comes as regulators weigh fines and structural remedies.
The Commission said it will launch a market test of the package, inviting feedback from customers and rivals before deciding whether to make the commitments legally binding. The case matters for a productivity software market where Microsoft has long held an advantage through distribution, and where Teams reached 300 million monthly active users in 2023 according to the company.
What Microsoft proposed
Microsoft said it will maintain and extend the unbundling of Teams from Microsoft 365 and Office 365 for enterprise customers, a change it first implemented in the EEA and Switzerland in October 2023 and broadened globally in 2024. The company plans to align standalone Teams and suite pricing across regions, publish clear migration terms, and offer choice screens during deployment for communication and collaboration apps.
The company also detailed new technical commitments, including documented APIs and event hooks to enable third party messaging and meeting services to interoperate with Outlook, SharePoint, OneDrive, and the Microsoft Graph. It said it will allow cross launching of meetings, calendar, and calling from rival apps, and will commit to data export portability for chat and channels.
Why it matters for rivals
Slack, now part of Salesforce, argued that packaging Teams with Microsoft 365 foreclosed competition by leveraging Microsoft’s office suite dominance. Ofcom’s 2023 study of UK cloud and software markets found Microsoft and Amazon had entrenched positions in adjacent services, with AWS and Microsoft Azure together accounting for 70 to 80 percent of UK IaaS revenue, underscoring broader concerns about ecosystem effects.
The European Commission issued a Statement of Objections in July 2024 alleging abuse of dominance tied to Teams distribution and interoperability limits. Remedies that reduce switching costs and improve technical access could open space for Slack, Zoom, and Cisco Webex, which have complained about default settings and integration gaps.
If accepted, the settlement would be one of the most consequential software tying cases in Europe since the Windows browser and media player decisions, and it would signal that competition authorities are focused on defaults and self preferencing across productivity and communications stacks, not only in mobile platforms and app stores.