Microsoft announced on Monday its decision to globally separate its chat and video application, Teams, from its Office suite of products.
This decision follows a previous action taken six months ago when the tech giant unbundled these two offerings in Europe, a move seen as an attempt to avoid potential fines from the European Union.
The European Commission had initiated an investigation into Microsoft’s practice of bundling Office and Teams following a complaint filed in 2020 by Slack, a competing workspace messaging app owned by Salesforce.
Teams, initially integrated into Office 365 in 2017 at no additional cost, gained significant traction during the pandemic, particularly for its video conferencing capabilities after replacing Skype for Business.
However, critics argued that bundling these products together provided Microsoft with an unfair advantage in the market.
Responding to feedback from the European Commission and seeking to provide clarity for customers, Microsoft extended its initiative to unbundle Teams from M365 and O365 in the European Economic Area and Switzerland to a global scale.
As part of this move, Microsoft introduced a new range of commercial Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites that exclude Teams outside the European Economic Area and Switzerland.
Additionally, a standalone Teams offering for Enterprise customers in those regions was also introduced. Customers are given the option to continue with their current licensing arrangements, renew, update, or switch to the new offerings starting April 1.
For new commercial customers, prices for Office without Teams will vary depending on the product, ranging from $7.75 to $54.75, while the standalone Teams offering will cost $5.25.
These prices are subject to variation based on country and currency, with Microsoft refraining from disclosing prices for existing packaged products.
Despite this unbundling effort, Microsoft still faces potential antitrust charges from the EU, with rivals criticizing the level of fees and the compatibility of their messaging services with Office Web Applications.
Over the past decade, Microsoft has accrued significant fines totalling 2.2 billion euros ($2.4 billion) from the EU for previous instances of tying or bundling multiple products together. If found guilty of antitrust violations, Microsoft could incur fines of up to 10% of its global annual turnover.
