Considering Microsoft has a history with competition law cases in the EU, this one has good chance to become a case as well, as the EU takes this very serious, which may as well result in the EU ordering Microsoft to at least ship an alternative Teamless version of Office for the European Market.
But if we go down that route, one would legally have to argue they should unbundle the entire Office suite altogether. After all, bundling Excel might "unfairly compete" with FreeOffice, or OneNote might "unfairly compete" with Evernote, or Outlook might "unfairly complete" with Thunderbird.
But then, none of those entities have ever complained of unfair competition, because merely bundling software in a voluntarily installed suite (as opposed to an operating system) has literally never equated to unfair competition. I suspect that will be taken into account.
In the worst case, maybe Microsoft should put back the "Advanced installation" method they've always had in prior versions. But I'd say that's as much as could be legally or rationally expected of them here.
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Considering Microsoft has a history with competition law cases in the EU, this one has good chance to become a case as well, as the EU takes this very serious, which may as well result in the EU ordering Microsoft to at least ship an alternative Teamless version of Office for the European Market.
But if we go down that route, one would legally have to argue they should unbundle the entire Office suite altogether. After all, bundling Excel might "unfairly compete" with FreeOffice, or OneNote might "unfairly compete" with Evernote, or Outlook might "unfairly complete" with Thunderbird.
But then, none of those entities have ever complained of unfair competition, because merely bundling software in a voluntarily installed suite (as opposed to an operating system) has literally never equated to unfair competition. I suspect that will be taken into account.
In the worst case, maybe Microsoft should put back the "Advanced installation" method they've always had in prior versions. But I'd say that's as much as could be legally or rationally expected of them here.