Microsoft backs down to Europe over Teams and Edge
Tech giant will unbundle Teams from Office 365 and stop links opening in Edge by default - but only for European customers.
Microsoft is to unbundle Teams from Microsoft Office in response to antitrust concerns raised by the European Commission.
Microsoft will sell Office without Teams to commercial customers in the European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland for €2 less per month from 1st October. Teams will be available as a standalone product for €5 per month for new customers.
Existing customers with Office 365 including Teams, will be able to keep it or switch to an Office version without Microsoft's videoconferencing app.
Microsoft will also make it easier for competing applications to work with Office 365 by developing a new method for hosting Office web apps within third-party services.
The move comes after the EC launched an antitrust investigation in July following an antitrust complaint by Slack. Microsoft says the changes are meant to address EU concerns about customer choice and interoperability.
"Today we are announcing proactive changes that we hope will start to address these concerns in a meaningful way, even while the European Commission's investigation continues and we cooperate with it," said Nanna-Louise Linde, VP Microsoft European government affairs, in a blog post.
Whether it will go far enough for the EC is another matter. Similar announcements have failed to placate the competition regulator in the past.
The EU has fined Microsoft a total of €2.2 billion over the past decade for its bundling practices, which the bloc says are anti-competitive.
Links no longer open in Edge by default
In a separate move, for customers in the EEA built-in Windows 11 links will no longer open in Microsoft's Edge browser by default.
In the Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 23531, which was released to registered developers last Friday, Windows system components "use the default browser to open links," according to a blog post.
Until now, built-in Windows links have opened in Edge, no matter what the user's primary browser might be. The company moved to block workarounds and third party-apps designed to bypass this behaviour.
This Europe-only change of heart is likely to be in response to EU's new Digital Markets Act which restricts unfair promotion of proprietary products.