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Microsoft avoids EU antitrust fine with Teams price split

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Microsoft sidestepped a potential multibillion-euro EU antitrust fine by agreeing to lower prices on Office products that exclude its Teams app, the European Commission announced Friday. The deal follows a long-running probe triggered by a 2020 complaint from Slack, later joined by German rival Alfaview, accusing Microsoft of unfairly bundling Teams with Office.

Under the agreement, Microsoft will widen the price difference by 50% between Office/Microsoft 365 packages sold with and without Teams, creating a gap of €1–€8 depending on the suite. This pricing model will stay in place for seven years, while additional commitments on interoperability and data portability—including the ability for customers to export Teams messaging data to competitors—will last 10 years.

EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera said the move would “open up competition in this crucial market,” ensuring companies can freely choose their collaboration tools. The decision arrives a week after Ribera fined Google €2.95 billion for adtech violations, a ruling that drew sharp criticism from U.S. President Donald Trump.

Microsoft Vice President Nanna-Louise Linde said the company welcomed the constructive dialogue and would implement its obligations globally. Alfaview CEO Niko Fostiropoulos praised the settlement as a win for Europe’s “digital sovereignty,” while Salesforce president Sabastian Niles called it “a meaningful step forward” and urged strict enforcement.

Microsoft has previously racked up €2.2 billion in EU fines for bundling and other practices, but in recent years it has sought a more cooperative stance with regulators. Antitrust penalties can reach up to 10% of a firm’s global annual turnover, meaning the company could have faced a fine of over $20 billion without the deal.

Microsoft Adjusts Office-Teams Pricing to Avoid EU Antitrust Fine

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Microsoft is making changes to the pricing structure of its Office product bundled with Teams, aiming to avoid a potential EU antitrust fine, according to sources familiar with the matter. This adjustment comes in response to complaints from competitors, including Salesforce-owned Slack and German rival alfaview, who raised concerns about Microsoft’s practice of bundling its chat and video app, Teams, with Office.

Teams, added to Office 365 in 2017, became particularly popular during the pandemic as a video conferencing tool, replacing Skype for Business. Microsoft’s new pricing strategy, introduced in 2023, unbundles Teams from Office, offering Office without Teams at a lower price (2 euros cheaper) and selling Teams as a standalone service for 5 euros per month. The aim is to create more competitive pricing, enabling rivals to offer their products at more attractive rates.

The European Commission has been seeking feedback from industry stakeholders, with a deadline for responses this week, before deciding whether to launch a formal market test. Microsoft has also reportedly proposed improved interoperability terms to help competitors in the space.

Both the EU competition authority and Microsoft declined to comment. The Commission’s investigation could lead to a fine of up to 10% of Microsoft’s global annual revenue, which could be significant, considering the company’s history with EU antitrust cases, including a 2.2 billion euro fine in the early 2000s for bundling products. If the EU accepts Microsoft’s offer, it could clear the path for other investigations, such as those involving Apple and Google.

Microsoft’s Massive Outlook and Teams Outage Resolved After More Than a Day

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Microsoft faced a significant outage that impacted Outlook and Teams services for over a day, affecting millions of users globally. The company initially projected a quick resolution, expecting the issue to be fixed within three hours. However, the recovery process turned out to be more prolonged, with Microsoft updating users multiple times throughout the day.

By noon, the company reported that the fix had reached around 98% of the affected environments. However, despite these efforts, reports of ongoing disruptions continued to flood monitoring platforms like Downdetector. It became apparent that updates were taking longer to reach some systems than anticipated, with progress slower than expected for the majority of users.

Microsoft did not offer a new estimated time for a full recovery, and by 2 p.m. ET, the company confirmed that delays were still affecting the restoration process.

The Impact of the Outage

While the outage severely disrupted many office workers’ ability to perform tasks via Outlook and Teams, some users in the U.S. found a silver lining, celebrating the unplanned break as they approached the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

This issue follows a series of major tech outages this year. However, Microsoft’s situation was not as widespread as other notable disruptions. The most significant outage of 2024 was caused by a software failure at CrowdStrike during the summer, which grounded air travel, disrupted hospital systems, and caused over $5 billion in direct losses to Fortune 500 companies.

A Cautionary Tale for Tech Giants

The Microsoft outage highlights the ongoing vulnerabilities in modern digital infrastructures, showing how quickly tech failures can affect both business productivity and day-to-day operations. While the issue has now been resolved, it serves as a reminder of the fragility of critical online services and the increasing reliance on such platforms in the workplace.