BRUSSELS, May 16 — Microsoft has offered to sell its Office product without Teams at a lower price than Office with Teams, as well as offer rivals better interoperability access to its services and products, EU antitrust regulators said on Friday.
The European Commission said it was now going to seek feedback from rivals and customers before deciding whether to accept the offer. Reuters was the first to report the move earlier this week.
If accepted, Microsoft's offer would bring an end to a long-running case triggered by a 2020 complaint by Salesforce-owned Slack, which could have resulted in a hefty antitrust fine for the United States tech giant.
In a blogpost, Microsoft's Vice President for European Government Affairs Nanna-Louise Linde said that the proposal was a clear and complete resolution to concerns raised by rivals and would give Europeans more choice.
The EU competition enforcer said that Microsoft's offer would allow Europeans to buy Office 365 and Microsoft 365 suites without Teams at a lower price than that for corresponding suites that include Teams.
Rivals could access and effectively interoperate with certain Microsoft products and services for specific functionalities, embed Office Web Applications (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) in their own products, and prominently integrate their products in Microsoft's core productivity applications.
Customers in Europe could extract their Teams messaging data for use in competing solutions. The pricing offer would be valid for seven years and interoperability for 10 years.
Microsoft said if its pricing offer is accepted, it would align the options and pricing for its suites and Teams service globally.
Interested parties have a month to provide feedback. Salesforce said it would carefully scrutinise the offer.
— Reuters
