Microsoft proposes new Office and Teams pricing to avoid massive EU fine

[Alfonso Maruccia]

In a nutshell: Recent antitrust laws approved in the EU provide the European Commission with significant firepower against monopoly-loving corporations. It now has its sights set on Microsoft, which is hoping to resolve the legal dispute with a new pricing policy.

Microsoft is looking into a potential change in how the company sells Office and Teams in a single package to appease European authorities and avoid a hefty antitrust fine. Three sources familiar with the matter confirmed Microsoft's diplomatic attempt to Reuters. The insiders said the company is trying to end a years-long investigation into its alleged anticompetitive practices with Office and Teams bundles.

The Europen Commission investigation started five years ago after Slack filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft. The complaint claimed that Redmond was reverting to its past monopolistic behavior by boosting Teams adoption through Office integration. Teams and other collaboration or video conferencing services saw a significant surge in demand during the COVID-19 pandemic. Microsoft was allegedly reaping all the benefits thanks to its popular productivity suite.

Brussels received an additional antitrust complaint in 2023 when German videoconferencing company Alfaview asked EU antitrust authorities to stop Microsoft from bundling Office and Teams. Europe imposed a €2.2 billion fine against Microsoft a couple of decades ago, and new penalties can now go up to 10 percent of a company's global yearly revenue.

Microsoft started to sell an "unbundled" version of Teams without Office in 2023. Sources say Redmond is willing to go even further, offering a wider price difference between an Office and Teams bundle and the two tools sold independently. Microsoft added Teams to Office 365 in 2017. It eventually replaced Skype for Business for 365 users' videoconferencing and collaboration needs.

Reuters notes that the European Commission asked some companies for feedback regarding Microsoft's offering. They have until this week to reply. After that, the EU could perform a "formal" market test using the new prices, before evaluating Redmond's proposal.

An EC insider stated that the Commission would like to move on and employ its staffing and resources against different "enemies." By accepting Microsoft's offer, the EU could focus on its latest antitrust investigations against Apple and Google.

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Microsoft proposes new Office and Teams pricing to avoid massive EU fine

 

[The Talking Tech]

As scummy as Microsoft is at least they haven't made any public alliances with Trump like most of Corporate America so that has to count for something.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

As an American, its always weird to see a regulatory body so consistently go after large corpos and try to actually "negotiate" additional options or better prices for their citizens.

It's so alien.

 

[mcnabney]

Wait until Trump unveils the 'Don't get Nuked' assessment on the EU. The US can play games like that too.

 

[BuckarooBonzaii]

I think when companies concede to things like this they have other plans to make money and the EU may be left behind.

 

[kiwigraeme]

Wait until Trump unveils the 'Don't get Nuked' assessment on the EU. The US can play games like that too.

Thing is EU is doing most of the world a favour.

Don't know why Red GOP people get their panties in a twist over California vehicle efficiency laws, might mean the get better engines and can still buy some cummins engine SUV if they wish , or what to put one in an existing chassis 6l. I mean why stop there, put in a V12 Diesel ( don't criticise my very poor car knowledge - not a petrol head )

 

[candle86]

There's nothing to do with the fact that teams just bundled with it it has to do with the fact teams is a better application slack is absolute garbage it's the most unintuitive pile of crap I've ever had to deal with so glad my company swapped over to teams and left that absolute pile in the dump where belongs.

They took their UI for message boards in the '90s slacks losing market share because it's an incompetent program poorly designed by people that apparently haven't taken a class on how to design an interface since 1994

 

[ibnMuhammad]

There's nothing to do with the fact that teams just bundled with it it has to do with the fact teams is a better application slack is absolute garbage it's the most unintuitive pile of crap I've ever had to deal with so glad my company swapped over to teams and left that absolute pile in the dump where belongs.

They took their UI for message boards in the '90s slacks losing market share because it's an incompetent program poorly designed by people that apparently haven't taken a class on how to design an interface since 1994

I and countless others I worked with in an EMEA conglomerate consultancy would disagree.

Teams channels make no sense, but for large meeting organised with Outlook, it was always Teams.

For everything else, including group conversations, and smaller ad-hoc meetings, it was always slack, where the video call was more fluid and you can draw on screen to point out issues and collaborate easily, etc.

This was the same pattern in countless large companies I worked with, including telecommunication firms. People always preferred Slack for messages, collaborations, channels, posting random stuff, and ad-hoc meetings.

Oh, and the new emoji's introduced in Teams couple of years ago was absolutely horrendous, looked like deformed faces and quite creepy! lol