Thanks to the assurance that it has disassembled its company’s messaging application team from its productivity suite, Microsoft’s efforts to go unscathed through the European Commission’s major antitrust investigation, which could lead to fines for the tech giant.
On Friday, the commission proposed Microsoft’s offer to address EU competition issues with companies, including teams and the rest of the office productivity suite for free Years of investigation That’s complaint Slack, a competitor’s office messaging app from 2020.
Microsoft has guaranteed that it will offer Microsoft 365 and Office 365 at a lower price over the next seven years, and let customers choose whether to pay to add collaboration apps to their suite.
The committee also managed to get Microsoft to agree to open up its APIs to enable critical functional interoperability between its suite and third-party messaging and collaboration tools, and to enable them to export data to their teams over the next five years.
Microsoft did not immediately return the request to get more details about its commitments.
In the investigation, European authorities defendant Competitive rules violated Microsoft abuses its dominance and gives the team an undue advantage by bundling the team with its productivity suite. The committee also stated in its preliminary findings that the advantages were improved as the team integrates with other Microsoft 365 applications such as Excel, Outlook, SharePoint and Word.
Microsoft try These issues were addressed by implementing partial bundles of some teams in April 2024, but the committee believes that wider changes are needed, and the company subsequently provided a revised plan in May 2025.
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For the EU and Microsoft, this recognition is a win-win situation, especially because there is no legal struggle. The committee can say that this is a major compromise in large-scale technologies. Now, compared to the version that wraps the application worldwide.
Microsoft also avoided punitive measures and major fines, as the commission’s fine for violating competition rules can reach up to 10% of global annual revenue, which could have been money on trucks given the technology giant’s revenue of $245 billion last year.
The committee also noted that Slack and Alfaview, a company that complained about the team, withdrew the complaint after conducting a market test on the committee earlier this year.
“Our commitment to binding about seven years or more to end their bundling behaviors could prevent competitors from competing effectively with the team,” Teresa Ribera, Executive Vice President of the European Commission’s Clean, Justice and Competitive Transition, said in a statement.
“So today’s decision opened up competition in this critical market and ensured that businesses are free to choose the communication and collaboration products that best suit their needs,” Ribera said.
