Microsoft will separate the Teams app from the Office suite worldwide

Technology company Microsoft said on April 1 that it would separate its Teams chat and video application from the Office office suite globally, six months after a similar move in Europe to avoid being banned by the European Union. (EU) antitrust fine.

The European Commission (EC) is investigating Microsoft's Office and Teams products after receiving complaints in 2020 from the office messaging app Slack owned by US software company Salesforce.

Microsoft added Teams to its Office 365 suite for free in 2017. The application later replaced Skype for Business and became popular during the pandemic, partly thanks to its online video meeting feature.

However, Microsoft's competitors argued that grouping these products gave Microsoft an unfair advantage. This technology 'giant' began selling Teams and Office separately in the EU and Switzerland on October 1 last year.

Microsoft said it will launch a new commercial Microsoft 365 and Office 365 product line excluding Teams in regions outside the European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland, along with a standalone Teams app. new team (Teams Standalone).

Starting April 1, customers can continue with their current contract, upgrade or switch to the new products mentioned above.

For new commercial customers, Office without Teams pricing ranges from $7.75-54.75 depending on product type, while Teams Standalone will cost $5.25. These numbers may vary by country and currency.

After the US Department of Justice sued Microsoft in 1998 for taking advantage of the dominant position of the Windows platform to suppress competition from rival web browsers, the company finally had to give in, thereby relaxing loose control over what computer manufacturers can install on their products.

Rival web browsers have become much more popular since this change. But analysts say that Microsoft's separation of Teams from Office may not have such a big impact.

After Microsoft Teams was separated from the Microsoft 365 and Office Suites product suites in Europe in October 2023, the number of users of the platform remained virtually unchanged, according to data from market research company Sensor Tower.

The number of monthly active users on the Microsoft Teams mobile app in Q1 2024 remained at the same 19 million as in Q4 2023.

Software expert Gil Luria of DA Davidson said the move may not completely eliminate the tightening of regulatory controls, but it shows that Microsoft is willing to proactively coordinate like this. may soften the stance of management.

Microsoft has been subject to EU antitrust fines of up to 2.2 billion euros ($2.4 billion) over the past 10 years for grouping two or more products together. This time, Microsoft is at risk of being fined 10% of its annual global revenue if it is confirmed to have violated antitrust laws.

Reporting to EU antitrust authorities, Microsoft said that the Google search engine is gaining a competitive advantage in artificial intelligence (AI) generated thanks to large data sets and AI chips.

Microsoft made the above point of view when the European Commission conducted consultations from January 2024 on the level of competition in the field of generative AI.

Generative AI is technology that can produce human-like responses to text prompts, with applications like Microsoft-funded OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini.

The increasing popularity of generative AI has raised concerns about misinformation and fake news. In the report, Microsoft said that today, only Google has the strength and independence at every layer of AI, from chips to mobile app stores.

Other companies will have to depend on collaboration to innovate and compete. According to Microsoft, Google's AI chips will help the corporation gain a competitive advantage in the coming years, while large datasets of proprietary software from Google Search Index and YouTube allow Google to train its models. Big language Gemini.

Microsoft argues that YouTube offers a superior set of video content, based on an estimated 14 billion videos. Google has access to such content, while other AI developers do not.

Meanwhile, Google hopes the European Commission's research will show that there are companies taking a similar approach to AI services. Microsoft, which has invested more than $10 billion in OpenAI, is attempts to allay concerns about such partnerships between large technology corporations and startups.

Google believes that startups rely on investments and partnerships that can pave the way for and expand operations.

Meanwhile, according to well-informed sources, Microsoft and OpenAI are planning a data center project that could be worth up to $100 billion, which includes an AI supercomputer called 'Stargate' that will be launched. launched in 2028.

The rapid adoption of generative AI technology has led to a surge in demand for AI data centers, which are capable of handling more advanced tasks than traditional data centers. But the cost for such a center is expected to be 100 times that of some of the largest existing data centers./.

Micah Soto

Update 02 April 2024