BRUSSELS — European Union regulators will seek public comment on proposed changes from Microsoft for Teams, signaling the U.S. company may be nearing the end of a long-running antitrust case targeting its messaging and videoconferencing app.
Microsoft had previously offered some modifications including unbundling Teams from its Office software suite in an attempt to head off the antitrust probe shortly after it was opened by the EU two years ago.
But those proposals didn’t satisfy the European Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s top competition enforcer, which accused Microsoft last year of potentially abusive behavior.
The Commission said Friday that it will now seek feedback on fresh commitments Microsoft has made to resolve the competition worries. That includes making the Office 365 and Microsoft 365 software packages available at a discount without Teams, and letting customers switch between packages without Teams. The company is also promising to make it easier for rival software to work with Teams and for users to move their data from Teams to to competing products.
The commission said in a press release that it “invites all interested parties to submit their views” on Microsoft’s proposals. If everyone is satisfied, they would become legally binding.
The Redmond, Wash.-based company is “hopeful” the Commission will “in the following months adopt a final decision closing its investigation,” Microsoft s vice president in charge of European government affairs, Nanna-Louise Linde, said in a blog post.
Microsoft’s commitments would be in force for up to 10 years, the Commission said. The company could incur fines worth up to 10% of its annual global revenues — which could run into tens of billions of euros — if it fails to honor them
The Teams investigation dates back to 2020, when Slack Technologies, which makes popular workplace messaging software, filed a complaint.
Slack, owned by business software maker Salesforce, alleged that Microsoft was abusing its market dominance to eliminate competition — in violation of EU laws — by illegally combining Teams with its Office suite, which includes Word, Excel and Outlook.
Salesforce President Sabastian Niles said the latest announcement “affirms that Microsoft’s anticompetitive practices with Teams have harmed competition and require a binding, enforceable, and effective remedy. We will carefully scrutinize Microsoft’s proposed commitments.”
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AP Business Writer Kelvin Chan contributed from London.
