Microsoft plans to separate its Teams communication platform from Office

Microsoft has agreed to stop bundling Teams, its remote collaboration software, with its Office productivity suite in an attempt to avoid an official EU antitrust investigation. Financial Times reports that while companies will eventually be able to buy Office with or without Teams installed, the mechanism on how to do this remains unclear.

Talks with EU regulators are ongoing, and a deal is not certain. Microsoft is facing its first regulatory issues in a decade, and the move comes as the company deals with its most significant regulatory concerns in over a decade. Competing remote-work platform Slack had complained to EU regulators in 2020, asking officials to make Microsoft sell Teams separately from its ubiquitous Office suite.

Microsoft has offered 10-year legal agreements to provide Call of Duty on Nintendo consoles and cloud-streaming platform Boosteroid to help ease concerns and secure approval for its planned $69 billion purchase of game publisher Activision Blizzard.