Microsoft could stop including Teams in Windows
The company is considering removing the messaging app in its Windows Office suite to avoid a potential EU investigation
Microsoft is considering ceasing to include the Teams messaging and video calling application in its Office suite in order to avoid a possible antitrust investigation by the regulatory institutions of the European Union, due to a complaint made in 2020 by the Slack platform.
The Office suite, now called Microsoft 365, comprises a set of programs designed to boost the productivity of companies and individuals when developing content in the work environment. Specifically, Microsoft 365 includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneDrive, and Teams, among other solutions.
However, according to statements from sources close to Microsoft collected by the Financial Times, the technology company plans to stop including the Teams service by default in the Office suite to avoid provoking an antitrust investigation by the regulatory institutions of the European Union. In this way, Microsoft would offer users the option to buy Office without Teams.
As these sources have detailed, the American company would propose the possibility of integrating Teams into the suite only for those users or companies that request it in their Office pack. In this way, it would not force its installation with the purchase of Microsoft 365, as is currently the case.
This decision is preceded by the complaint that the instant messaging application also focused on companies and currently owned by Salesforce, Slack, filed in 2020. In his complaint, Slack accused Microsoft of monopoly for considering that the linking of Teams to Office is an abuse of its dominant position in the ‘software’ sector with its package of office tools.
“Slack asks the European Commission to act to ensure that Microsoft cannot continue to illegally take advantage of its power in one market to grow in another by bundling or bundling products“, the Salesforce platform said in 2020.
Source: dpa
(Reference image source: file)
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