Microsoft has agreed to sell the Office 365 suite for a much lower price than before, with no team price, ending Slack’s more than five years of EU dispute and avoiding EU fines.
Software giant Antitrust accused of violating EU June 2024, a bundled team with Office 365 and Microsoft 365 subscriptions. The dispute began in July 2020, when Slack, now owned by Salesforce, filed a formal complaint accusing Microsoft of conducting an “illegal and anti-competitive practice to abuse its market advantage” by binding its team to its office productivity suite of its market advantage.
Microsoft must comply with the EU agreement for at least seven years or face a fine. European Union Competition Leader Teresa Ribera says The deal “opens up competition in this critical market and ensures that businesses are free to choose the communication and collaboration products that best suit their needs.”
Microsoft’s protocol should translate into substantial cost savings for Office/Microsoft 365 customers. The price difference between teams and suites without teams will drop by another 50%. Price reductions will occur in the EU, but may be extended worldwide.
Other changes will include:
- Customers with long-term licenses can be converted to licenses that do not include teams.
- Team competitors such as Slack, Google Meet, and Zoom will be interoperable with office software such as Word and Excel.
- If a customer wants to switch to another communications platform, their data can move their data out.
The EU announced that “gives a clear message: Microsoft’s anti-competitive binding to the team hurts businesses, rejects fair choices from customers and leads to years of competition failure.”
Time will tell if the EU-Microv agreement will be highly inclined to slack off and stay away from the team. In 2024, the team has Five times the monthly user Slack and bring $8 billion in revenueabout twice the amount Slack is expected to bring this year.
