Enlarge / Teams is being decoupled from the other Office apps worldwide, six months after Microsoft did the same thing for the EU. (credit: Microsoft/Andrew Cunningham)

Months after unbundling the apps in the European Union, Microsoft is taking the Office and Teams breakup worldwide. Reuters reports that Microsoft will begin selling Teams and the other Microsoft 365 apps to new commercial customers as separate products with separate price tags beginning today.

This is a win for other team communication apps like Slack and videoconferencing apps like Zoom, both of which predate Teams but haven't had the benefits of the Office apps' huge established user base.

The separation follows an EU regulatory investigation that started in July of 2023 , almost exactly three years after Slack initially filed a complaint alleging that Microsoft was "abusing its market dominance to extinguish competition in breach of European Union competition law."

Enlarge / The reformulated Microsoft Teams app. (credit: Microsoft)

If you or your employer uses Microsoft Teams for communication, good news: Microsoft is releasing a fully rewritten version today for Windows PCs and Macs that promises to run faster while using fewer system resources.

A preview of this app was originally released for Windows in March, but the final release covers all types of Teams instances, re-adds support for features like breakout rooms and third-party app support, and supports macOS.

The new Teams app is notable for improved performance and reduced disk space usage, especially when running on Windows PCs. Microsoft says that the reformulated version of Teams is "up to two times faster while using 50 percent less memory" on Windows systems. That sound you hear is old and underspecced work PCs in offices around the world breathing a sigh of relief.

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European Union regulators have opened a formal investigation into claims that Microsoft is unfairly bundling its Teams video conferencing app with its popular Office software as Brussels intensifies its scrutiny of big technology groups.

The European Commission, the executive body of the EU, said on Thursday that it feared Microsoft “may be abusing and defending” its market dominance in productivity software “by restricting competition.”

It was concerned the US tech giant may grant Teams “distribution advantages by not giving customers the choice” over access to the product, the statement said.

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It has been a tough year for PC companies and companies that make PC components. Companies like Intel, AMD, and Nvidia have all reported big drops in revenue from the hardware that they sell to consumers (though the hardware they sell to other businesses is often doing better).

Microsoft contributed another data point to that trend today , with fourth-quarter 2023 financial results that showed modest growth (revenue up 8 percent year over year, from $51.9 billion to $56.2 billion), but no thanks to its consumer software and hardware businesses.

Revenue from the company's More Personal Computing division, which encompasses Windows licenses, Surface PCs and other accessories, Xbox hardware and software and services, and ad revenue, was down 4 percent year over year. This decrease was driven mostly by a drop in sales of Windows licenses to PC makers (down 12 percent because of "PC market weakness") and by reduced hardware sales (down 20 percent, though the company didn't say how much of this drop came from its accessory business and how much came from Surface PCs). Microsoft makes its own PCs and PC accessories and sells the software that most other PC makers use on their hardware, so when the entire PC ecosystem is doing poorly, Microsoft gets hit twice.

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A few months ago, Microsoft previewed Microsoft 365 Copilot , a new service that promised to integrate generative AI features into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and the other productivity apps formerly known as Microsoft Office . Among other things, Copilot promises to automate the creation of documents and emails, summarize meeting notes, and assist in the analysis of Excel data.

Microsoft has just announced pricing for the Copilot features, and it isn't cheap. Copilot will cost an extra $30 per user per month on top of whatever your business is already paying for Microsoft 365—in many cases, this will double or even triple your monthly costs. Copilot can be added to Microsoft 365 Business Standard or Premium ($12.50 and $22 per user per month, respectively) or to Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 accounts for enterprises ($36 or $57 per user per month). It can't be added to the cheaper Microsoft 365 Business Basic plan or to any home plans.

The relatively high cost is likely related to the high server costs for running these kinds of generative AI models. Copilot also draws context from the other emails, documents, and other files in your business's Microsoft 365 cloud, so each business that Microsoft supports will have a slightly different data set that it will need to be able to draw from.

Enlarge / Customizing a Mesh for Teams avatar. Like many people on real-life video calls, the avatars only feature business attire from the waist up. (credit: Microsoft)

There are plenty of reasons to turn your camera off during a Zoom or Teams meeting—maybe you're cleaning your office and you don't want to look like you're not paying attention, or your kid is climbing all over you, or you just haven't managed to shower yet and you don't want to show your coworkers how disheveled you are.

For people who want to split the difference between appearing on camera and switching it off, Microsoft will be adding animated 3D avatars to Microsoft Teams in May, according to Microsoft's product roadmap . The 3D avatars are a component of " Mesh ," an initiative Microsoft announced back in late 2021 when the "metaverse" hype had reached a fever pitch. As originally envisioned, Mesh will include not just 3D Teams avatars, but virtual workspaces accessible via VR, so that people working remotely can experience the joy of sitting in a meeting room while someone drones on in front of a PowerPoint deck.

The roadmap update doesn't include a complete list of features, but previous announcements about Mesh for Teams have shown avatars with customizable body types, skin tones, hair colors and hairstyles, clothes, and facial features. Microsoft said in late 2021 that the initial versions of these avatars would only animate when users were speaking, but eventually the company wants them to be able to mimic users' real-world facial expressions and movements as captured by their webcams.

Enlarge / Having a great meeting in Microsoft Teams. (credit: Microsoft)

There is a free Microsoft Teams tier now, and there will continue to be a free Microsoft Teams tier after April 12, 2023. But in a bureaucratic twist, neither product will have anything to do with the other. Current users of Microsoft Teams Free will either need to create new accounts in a new tier called Microsoft Teams (free), losing all their Teams data in the process, or upgrade to a $4-per-user-per-month Microsoft Teams Essentials tier to keep all their stuff.

Microsoft spells out the changes on this support page about the retirement of Microsoft Teams Free, now called Microsoft Teams Free (classic). Files from Microsoft Teams Free (classic) can be downloaded and saved until the service shuts down on April 12, but there's no automated process for importing those files or other user accounts into a Microsoft Teams (free) account.

Microsoft's product page positions the new Microsoft Teams (free) tier as a product for home users and families, but the features it offers are pretty similar to the old classic tier overall. Video calls still top out at 100 participants and a one-hour runtime (one-on-one meetings can run for up to 30 hours). Each Teams (free) user gets 5GB of storage, while Teams Free (classic) users received 2GB each and a 10GB pool of shared storage. Both products offer unlimited chatting and access to shared files, task lists, and polls.

Enlarge / Using Teams in a browser is actually safer than using Microsoft's desktop apps, which are wrapped around a browser. It's a lot to work through. (credit: Jernej Furman / Flickr )

Microsoft's Teams client stores users' authentication tokens in an unprotected text format, potentially allowing attackers with local access to post messages and move laterally through an organization, even with two-factor authentication enabled, according to a cybersecurity company.

Vectra recommends avoiding Microsoft's desktop client, built with the Electron framework for creating apps from browser technologies, until Microsoft has patched the flaw. Using the web-based Teams client inside a browser like Microsoft Edge is, somewhat paradoxically, more secure, Vectra claims. The reported issue affects Windows, Mac, and Linux users.

Microsoft, for its part, believes Vectra's exploit "does not meet our bar for immediate servicing," since it would require other vulnerabilities to get inside the network in the first place. A spokesperson told Dark Reading that the company will "consider addressing (the issue) in a future product release."