Antitrust regulators in the European Union have charged Microsoft with illegally selling Teams as a bundle with Office365. The Commission is also unhappy that the tech giant is not doing enough to fully separate these products. This was reported by The Verge.
“The European Commission has informed Microsoft of its preliminary view that Microsoft has breached EU antitrust rules by tying its communication and collaboration product Teams to its popular productivity applications included in its suites for businesses Office 365 and Microsoft 365,” the European Commission said in a statement.
In April of this year, the company announced that it would divest Teams and Office globally, and the year before, in 2023, it divested the products in the European Union.
However, the Commission said in a statement that these changes are not sufficient to address the concerns and that additional changes in the company's behavior are needed to restore competition.
Microsoft, in turn, said it was ready for a dialog with regulators and that the company aimed to find a solution to the problem. If the tech giant is found guilty of violating antitrust laws, the company faces a fine of up to 10% of its annual global turnover.