BRUSSELS, Sept 12 —The European Commission and US software giant Microsoft, on Friday, reached a settlement in the antitrust case over the marketing of the Teams collaboration platform, reported German Press Agency (dpa).

The commission said the US company made several concessions, allowing it to avoid a fine.

“Organisations big and small across Europe and around the world rely heavily on videoconferencing, chat and collaboration tools, especially since the coronavirus pandemic,” said European Commission Vice President Teresa Ribera.

“With today’s decision, we are making Microsoft’s commitments legally binding for at least seven years to end its tying practices, which may have hindered rivals from competing effectively with Teams,” she said.

Microsoft Office packages with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook applications will be made available without Teams at a reduced price in the EU, and long-term Office customers will be able to switch to a cheaper package without Teams, the commission said.

Microsoft will also improve interoperability between Teams and competitor tools and allow customers to move their data from Teams to competing applications.

The commission had previously accused Microsoft of unlawfully leveraging its market power to promote its Teams collaboration platform.

The EU proceedings against Microsoft were triggered by a complaint from competitor Slack in the summer of 2020. Slack argued it was at a significant disadvantage due to the integration of 

Teams into the Office 365 and Microsoft 365 packages.

If no settlement had been reached, the commission could have imposed fines of up to 10 per cent of global annual turnover or daily penalty payments amounting to 5 per cent of turnover. — Bernama-dpa