Microsoft Reportedly Faces EU Antitrust Probe for Bundling Teams
Microsoft is reportedly facing an EU antitrust probe into its Teams and Office bundling after its concessions to avoid the investigation were considered inadequate by the European Commission, as first reported by Reuters.
EU regulators had been in discussions with Microsoft since its rivals Slack lodged an official complaint in 2020, claiming that Microsoft’s bundling of Office and Teams was uncompetitive.
In April, Microsoft offered to decouple Teams from Office to avoid a formal EU investigation so prospective customers who bought Office in the future could choose whether to purchase Teams or not. Microsoft recently offered to reduce the price of its Office product without Teams.
However, negotiations around remedies have reportedly reached a roadblock. Reuters’ sources said that the European Commission and Microsoft were some distance apart in agreeing on a price reduction between Office without Teams and Office with the UC and collaboration platform, resulting in a breakdown in negotiations.
"We continue to engage cooperatively with the Commission in its investigation and are open to pragmatic solutions that address its concerns and serve customers well," a Microsoft spokesperson told Reuters.
If found in breach of EU antitrust rules, Microsoft could be fined up to 10 percent of its annual turnover.
Teams Adds Spatial Audio for Immersive Meetings and Releases Swathe of Teams Room Updates for Android and Windows
Teams is adding spatial audio for immersive meetings in its end-of-June update.
Users with either a wired stereo headset or built-in stereo speakers can experience the "spatialised" voices of attendees across Gallery View’s meeting stage.
Steven Stein, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post:
Spatial audio brings a next-generation immersive soundscape to Teams meetings (…) This new audio experience spatialises the voices of attendees across the visual meeting stage in the Gallery view. This helps make conversations more natural, increasing the sense of audio presence, and making the conversation easier to follow when multiple people are speaking together."
Among the other specific Teams features introduced by Microsoft are sophisticated chat capabilities, a user toggle to signal whether they’re working on-premises or remotely, and customisable captions.
There have also been important updates for Teams Rooms for both its Android and Windows products, not limited to Microsoft delaying the end of personal terms Teams Rooms hardware licenses.
Graham Walsh, Microsoft MVP & Product Specialist at Neat, spoke to UC Today about what new features will be added to Teams Room on Android, including the capability for additional USB cameras on the device, an alternative option of a content camera or magic whiteboard, and the option for defaulting a user’s layout to content and people.
Another new feature is something that many OEMs had already worked on when they built their own menu or swipe menu to control the camera and the framing. "This means it’s simplified for the user that when they hit the icon next to the camera now, the down arrow, they get to choose room view, composite view or active speaker," Walsh explained.
