By removing Microsoft Teams from Office, the company hopes to avoid a European antitrust investigation.

Microsoft agrees to no longer bundle Teams within the Office suite. With this decision, the company hopes to avoid a European antitrust investigation. Sources within the Financial Times report that companies can buy Office with or without Office bundled. Exactly how this mechanism will work is not yet clear.

Discussions between Microsoft and EU regulators are ongoing, according to FT, and it’s not certain an agreement can be reached. Microsoft tells FT that it recognizes its responsibilities in the EU as a big tech company. “We remain cooperatively engaged in the investigation and are open to pragmatic solutions that address the committee’s concerns and serve customers well.”

The complaint dates back to mid-2020 and was filed by Slack, the platform most impacted by Teams success. Slack accused Microsoft of bundling teams in the Microsoft 365 package giving the application an unfair advantage. Shortly after the indictment, Salesforce took over Slack, which greatly diminished the importance of the case. Teams has now grown into one of the leading chat and video calling platforms.

It is Microsoft’s first European antitrust case in ten years. In 2009, the last case where Windows did not give users enough disk space to install a web browser of their choice was settled. In 2013, he was only able to do this to a limited extent, which led to a fine of 561 million euros.