Microsoft has been making changes to its Office suite for some time now, and it has even started adding new features based on artificial intelligence to programs like Microsoft Paint. However, the company is also making moves that might seem a bit unusual to the general public. In this instance, the announcement has come early – in October, Microsoft Teams will be removed from the Office Suite 365, at least in Europe. This decision comes after an investigation into anti-competitive practices by the European Commission.
Microsoft is not the first company to face regulatory actions. This has recently happened to Tesla in the United States, although Microsoft has been particularly cooperative with the authority. They have pledged to remove the Teams application despite stating that “these changes will affect customers of our Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites in the European Economic Area and Switzerland.”
The consequences of Teams leaving Office
This separation means that customers, in any case, will see a reduction in the Microsoft Office 365 fee without Teams or pay an additional license to use the application for 5 euros per month, which ends up being 60 euros more per year. The Office fee, however, will not drop by 5 euros per month, but by just 2.
These new subscription prices will only affect new users and not those who already have an active subscription, although anyone can remove applications from their subscription and even switch to the Office “without Teams” option. In any case, and despite this setback, Microsoft is working on improving interoperability on rival platforms such as Zoom or Slack and will allow Office web applications to be embedded in competing applications, as it does in Teams.
In this way Microsoft hopes to calm the waters and avoid new problems with regulatory frameworks, since Slack in 2020 already filed a complaint against the IT giant. In fact, the company is confident that these two changes will balance the interest of its competitors and thus maintain a clean battle to be the first provider of this type of services.
