By Foo Yun Chee
Brussels (Reuters) – Microsoft proposed to expand the price differential between its office product sold with its cat and video application teams and its software sold without the application in order to avoid a possible fine antitrust fine The EU, according to three sources.
The decision of the American technology giant comes five years after Slack, belonging to Salesforce, complained to the European Commission for the allocation of Microsoft teams. In 2023, the German rival Alfavieow filed a grievance similar to the EU watchdog.
The teams, which were added to Office 365 in 2017 free of charge and finally replaced Skype for business, became popular during the pandemic partly due to its videoconference.
Bringing the office with more expensive teams could help its rivals offer their products at competitive prices and encourage users to switch to them.
Microsoft has unbundled the desktop teams in 2023, selling an office without teams for 2 euros less than in the office with the video application. He said the autonomous teams would be sold for 5 euros per month.
The Commission asked certain companies comments, which gives them until this week to respond, before it decides to do an official market test, said that the three people, all having direct knowledge of the question.
They said Microsoft also offered better terms of interoperability to facilitate competition from competitors.
The EU and Microsoft competition application, which accumulated 2.2 billion euros ($ 2.3 billion) of EU antitrust fines two decades ago for having linked or grouped two products Or more together, refused to comment. EU fines can reach 10% of a company’s world annual income.
If the commission accepts Microsoft’s offer without fine or conclusion of reprehensible acts, this would release the workforce and resources for its investigations on Apple and Google, according to one of the sources.
(1 $ = 0.9695 euros)
(Report by Foo Yun Chee; edition by Ros Russell)
