Microsoft removed Teams from the Office bundle back in October, but that may not be all. The European Union is not yet convinced.

Chief Executive Brad Smith reportedly said this week that Microsoft was willing to make “further concessions” to bring a final conclusion to the EU’s antitrust investigation. “I expect we will take more steps. We’ve done a lot of work in the Teams area, our work is not done yet. “Microsoft is committed to addressing regulators’ concerns,” Smith said.

Microsoft decided in August to remove Teams from the Office bundle for European users and expanded this measure worldwide in April. Companies that want to subscribe to the 365 offering will therefore have to add Teams as a separate product from now on. Customers who already have a subscription have the choice of keeping Teams or removing Teams from their license at a discount.

The European Union has already made it clear that it believes this measure does not go far enough to promote fairness in the market. For now, the antitrust case will continue as usual. The EU launched an investigation following a complaint from Slack in 2020. The business chat application found that Teams’ integration with Office constituted unfair competition.

Multiple fees

The company does not want to go into detail about what concessions Microsoft would make to convince the EU of its goodwill. It is not the only thing that Microsoft has its hands full with. The European cloud provider association CISPE has also been suing Microsoft for several years. The company hopes to make this burden disappear with a check worth millions.

Microsoft is one usher under the new Digital Markets Act. This implies that the company bears greater responsibility due to its market dominance. The EU itself has become more interested in the formation of monopolies in recent years and is taking a tougher approach, especially in the tech world.