Beast of Redmond runs scared from EC antitrust cops half decade after rivals complained

Microsoft is offering to make a series of concessions for up to ten years to pacify European Commission antitrust regulators. This follows protests from users that tying Teams with its biz productivity applications hinders competition.

The executive body of the EU confirmed today it is seeking feedback on those modificaitons proposed by the US cloud and software corporation.

Under the commitments proposed, the EC says Microsoft would make versions of Teams with Office 365 and Microsoft 365 available at a "reduced price"; let customers buy the suites without Teams, including those within existing contract frameworks; give rivals better interoperability with other Microsoft software; and allow clients to move data out of Teams to "facilitate the use of competition solutions."

This comes almost five years after Slack general counsel David Schellhase grumbled to the EC that Microsoft was "reverting to past behavior," adding: "They created a weak, copycat product and tied ...