Microsoft offers to sell offices without teams to soothe EU regulators

Microsoft proposed to rid its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 software suites of its teamwork communication application to respond to European regulators’ competition problems.

The European Commission, which is the executive branch of the European Union, said on Friday that Microsoft is committed to responding to concerns about the link of teams to its widely used productivity tools, such as Word and Outlook.

As part of a series of proposals, Microsoft has undertaken to make the versions of Office 365 and Microsoft 365 available without teams at a reduced price, as well as to allow customers to move to unless you tools, including in the context of existing contracts.

Microsoft is also committed to providing competitors increased to interoperability with other Microsoft products and allow customers to remove their data from teams to competing products.

“The commitments proposed are the result of constructive and good faith discussions with the European Commission for several months,” Nanna-Louise, vice-president of European government affairs in Microsoft, said in a statement.

“We believe that they represent a clear and complete resolution of the concerns raised by our competitors and will provide European customers with more choices.”

The EU examined Microsoft to attach teams by Microsoft with its popular suite of productivity Office following a legal complaint made by the Slack work messaging application in 2020 that the bundle represented an abuse of market power.

Slack was acquired by Salesforce for $ 27.7 billion in 2021.

SABASTIAN NILES, President of Salesforce and Legal Director, said that the announcement of the European Commission “also affirms that Microsoft’s anti -competitive practices with the teams have harmed competition and require a binding, enforceable and efficient remedy”.

“We will carefully examine the commitments offered by Microsoft,” he added.

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