⚖️ Microsoft avoid EU antitrust issues

Author

Liam Gill
September 20, 2025

Microsoft Escapes EU Antitrust Heat

The European Commission has closed its long-running antitrust probe into Microsoft after the company agreed to unbundle its Teams messaging app from Office and Microsoft 365. The investigation, sparked by Slack’s 2020 complaint, accused Microsoft of abusing its dominance by bundling Teams and giving it an unfair leg up through integration with other productivity tools. Facing the possibility of fines as high as 10% of global revenue — billions of dollars — Microsoft instead cut a deal.

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The Compromise That Sealed the Deal

Under the agreement, Microsoft will sell its productivity suites without Teams for at least seven years at a reduced price, while still allowing customers to pay extra if they want to add Teams back in. It is also committed to opening up APIs for interoperability and to let rivals more easily export data out of Teams for the next five years. The Commission, which had already rejected an earlier partial unbundling, said the revised plan finally went far enough to restore competition. Slack and Alfaview, the two companies that had filed complaints, withdrew them after the new terms were market-tested.

Why This Matters for Big Tech

The settlement is a rare case of a Big Tech antitrust dispute ending without years of courtroom battles. Microsoft avoids fines, the Commission can claim a victory for competition, and rivals gain more breathing room in the collaboration software market. But the deal also highlights the EU’s leverage: even a giant like Microsoft, with $245 billion in revenue last year, blinked when faced with the risk of multibillion-dollar penalties. The decision sets a precedent for how regulators may push other tech giants into structural concessions without litigation.

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