Microsoft has announced that it will start selling its Teams video conferencing application independently from its Office software on a worldwide scale, following the modification made in Europe in August. The announcement was made by the company on Monday..
According to a blog post by the company, Microsoft 365 and Office 365 will provide packages without Teams and a standalone version of Teams to customers globally.
Existing customers subscribed to any of the packages will have the choice to renew, use, or upgrade their plans as usual, or switch to one of the new versions that separates the features.
The changes initially implemented in Europe happened a month after the European Commission launched an investigation into Microsoft's anticompetitive practices related to the bundling of the features.
A Microsoft spokesperson stated, “To ensure clarity for our customers, we are extending the steps we took last year to unbundle Teams from M365 and O365 in the European Economic Area and Switzerland to customers globally. Doing so also addresses feedback from the European Commission by providing multinational companies more flexibility when they want to standardize their purchasing across geographies.”
This change is distinct from adjustments that dominant tech companies are making in response to other regulations. This is in response to regulations implemented by Europe under the Digital Markets Act, which aims to introduce more competition to the tech industry. Although the rules are currently only in place in Europe, experts have suggested that the changes could have global effects for users if the companies opt to apply some of the regulations more broadly, as Microsoft did with the separation of Teams and Office suites in response to unrelated pressure.
Microsoft will start selling its Teams video conferencing app separately from its Office software worldwide, following the change that was made in Europe in August. Microsoft 365 and Office 365 will provide packages without Teams and a standalone version of Teams to customers globally, as stated by the company in a…
