In an effort to avoid an antitrust investigation by EU regulators, Microsoft has agreed to stop automatically installing its Teams video conferencing and messaging app on devices that use its Office software.
According to a report in the Financial Times, this move comes after rival Slack lodged a complaint in 2020 accusing Microsoft of bundling the two services together in an anti-competitive manner. Going forward, companies purchasing Office will have the option to include or exclude Teams, although the details of this mechanism have not yet been made clear.
Talks between Microsoft and regulators are ongoing, and a final agreement has not been reached. This move is part of Microsoft’s efforts to avoid its first antitrust probe in over a decade and comes after the company settled with the European Commission in 2008 over accusations of pushing users to download its Internet Explorer browser at the expense of rivals.
