Microsoft is still under fire for bundling Teams with Microsoft Office

Right now, Google is in the midst of a large anit-competition case, but it’s not the only company under fire for its size. Microsoft is still battling the EU over bundling Teams with Office. Well, according to a new report, the EU is asking Microsoft Teams’ competitors whether unbundling the services in the EU was enough.

This fight has been going on for the past three years, actually. Throughout most of the world, you can get a subscription to Microsoft Team along with your Office subscription. This eliminates the need for Office members to turn to other communication platforms. Since Office is an industry-standard suite, other companies feel that Microsoft is unfairly using its size to beat out the competition.

Earlier this year, Microsoft was pushed to unbundle Teams from Office in the EU, and that saw the plan drop €2/month. That went into effect on October 1st, but this story isn’t quite over.

The EU asked Teams’ competitors if the move was enough

It seems that Microsoft’s solution didn’t quite satisfy the regulators, and the EU is looking for feedback from other companies. According to the report, the EU regulatory body sent a questionnaire to notable Teams competitors asking whether they felt that Microsoft’s move was enough. We’re not sure what the companies said, but can’t imagine that they’re satisfied. The EU is only one market, and it doesn’t include the UK.

If companies really want to stick it to Microsoft, they’ll say “heck no” and move to have the company unbundle the products worldwide. In any case, the fact that the EU is asking this suggests that there could be a lawsuit in the future. We don’t know if there will definitely be one, but it’s not unfathomable.

A company as large as Microsoft has its toes in about 10,000 different industries. Being a trillion-dollar company, it has the funds to make its products ample competition for other companies. This makes Microsoft like flypaper for anti-competition lawsuits. At the moment, we’ll need to wait for the results of the questionnaire to know what’s going to happen.