⚠ Forced UnbundlingModerate threat

The very effectiveness of the Teams bundle is what drew the regulator's eye, and the specific danger here is that competition authorities can simply take the weapon away. Europe's regulators pressed Microsoft over folding Teams into Office¹ — exactly the maneuver that blunted a specialist rival for free — and forced the company to begin selling the two separately. When the bundle is unwound by decree, the good-enough product must suddenly compete on its own merits and its own price, without the free-and-already-there advantage that won it the market.

The broader danger is precedent. If regulators establish that bundling a new capability into the dominant suite is an abuse, they threaten not just Teams but the entire playbook — the same tactic Microsoft is now using to push AI across its products. A remedy that generalizes from Teams to the method itself would blunt the franchise's favorite engine of expansion.

What blunts the blow is that unbundling Teams does not un-teach the habit — hundreds of millions already use it, wired into their daily work, and inertia keeps them there even when the products are priced apart. Antitrust remedies tend to be narrow and slow, addressing one tie at a time while the deep switching costs underneath remain untouched. Microsoft can lose the Teams skirmish and keep the war.

On this specific tactic, the worry runs moderate. Forced unbundling genuinely removes the free-inside-the-bundle weapon for the products it reaches, and the precedent could constrain the AI cross-sell — but it operates one product at a time, it cannot reverse the habits already formed, and it leaves the underlying grip that makes the whole franchise sticky entirely in place.