8 ms·

The more I consider it, the more I think that bundling is anticompetitive. I guess there are some synergies to having Teams and Word integrated, but they don't

• Analemma_ 6y ago
  It's tricky, though. Technical aspects nonwithstanding, suppose what we call "Microsoft Office" had never been separate programs to begin with, and right from the beginning had been a single binary that did Word, Excel, Outlook, etc. depending on what you clicked, and then that binary had just gotten new features every time Microsoft discovered a new thing they thought it needed. Would it be anticompetitive to add a chat feature to that program? If so, when do software updates become anticompetitive? If not, what is the functional difference between that and the situation we have now?
  • TheOperator 6y ago
    One will recall that Internet Explorer was literally integrated into Windows 98, replacing the file explorer at one point, so Microsoft could argue they couldn't unbundle it. WeChat and Indian "Super Apps" followed this model to grow to success. WeChat Pay in 2013 was basically like Facebook taking WhatsApp and using it to become a player competing against MasterCard/Visa. Yes you can build a giant do it all monolith app to duplicate your competitions features and then crush them. The fact the apps are packed as a single program instead of via distinct programs isn't THAT meaningful and I'm kind of happy it isn't otherwise we would veer into lawyers designing programs more and more. The Slack/Microsoft thing smacks of anticompetitive behavior simply because Teams is essentially free and on Microsoft's lowest cost plans and Microsoft is transparently attempting to crush Slack to death in a price war to secure a monopoly. The underlying quality of the two products is rendered a moot point.
    • singhrac 6y ago
      I think Microsoft bundling IE is a very valid comparison. I guess it's hard to see what's a transparent attempt to crush Slack and what's just the regular enhancement of business. After all, you can hardly buy Word alone and no one complains. The problem I run into here is that somehow relying on antitrust prosecutorial discretion does kind of make it hard to innovate, since you might be unsure about the line between outcompeting and being anticompetitive. Slack drove HipChat out of business because it was frankly terrible. But I do think the lawyers can mostly figure this out.
      • yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
        > After all, you can hardly buy Word alone and no one complains. That seems like a very good thing to complain about! Why should I pay for Excel when I only want Word?
        • paulryanrogers 6y ago
          IIRC it used to be possible to buy them separately.
      • TheOperator 6y ago
        The fact you can't hardly buy a copy of word without having a copy of teams thrown in is what's the issue. You can't get excel with powerBI without also having to buy teams. It's more how Microsoft sells Teams than the fact that Teams exists at all that raises my eyebrow. Teams doesn't sell Teams, Word and Excel sell Teams. Really saying that Microsoft won't let you buy their most popular products alone is just another way to phrase this situation.
        • iakh 6y ago
          This is like complaining about the coupons you get included from an online order. You're technically correct, but the version you get for "free" is pretty much just a freemium version of the actual product. It's usually limited in such a way that maybe small teams would get some benefits, but any sizeable organizations would have to pay to upgrade. As an example, being able to use an API requires an upgraded license
• lazylizard 6y ago
  which parts of a toyota must not be made by toyota though? tires? air bags? seats? audio? air con?
  • wp381640 6y ago
    Toyota aren't a monopoly and the auto industry is one of the most regulated on earth
    • nitinreddy88 6y ago
      Microsoft is not monopoly by any means now.
      • gsich 6y ago
        90%+ on the OS speaks otherwise. Yeah technically it's not a monopoly because there is Linux.
        • AuthorizedCust 6y ago
          And Mac OS, which is about 14% of desktops?
          • foepys 6y ago
            MacOS never ever as a 14% desktop market share. Maybe in some states in the US but worldwide it's below 5%. It might reach 14% if you include iOS.
            • AuthorizedCust 6y ago
              It's about 14% per https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide.
              • 6y ago
• dheera 6y ago
  Is it just me or does anyone else find Microsoft Teams horribly unusable? Every time I try to log in (for a client's project) it wants a goddamn SMS authentication and Slack never had me do that BS. I don't even use SMS and so I have to dig through Twilio API just to log in.
  • stingraycharles 6y ago
    I have multiple office365 accounts and within those accounts, and in a large number of different teams. The UX of switching between these is absolutely terrible.
  • 01100011 6y ago
    It has its problems but so does Slack. It seems to be getting better quickly though. I applaud MS for having a Linux client that actually works. The biggest annoyance is that it doesn't remember my phone number when using phone audio for meetings. The UI is a bit confusing at times but I'm getting used to it.
    • otabdeveloper4 6y ago
      Teams is probably the buggiest software on Earth. A true achievement.
    • dheera 6y ago
      Does it actually work? It seems to crash and freeze my machine for 15 seconds at every startup. It also loves going full screen on my 4K monitor. Spews out 404 errors half the time when I try to log in. Freaking 404 errors! That shouldn't even be a thing.
      • 01100011 6y ago
        Works great. I run it on Ubuntu 20.04 in a virtualbox VM running on Ubuntu 20.04 as I keep my work stuff in a VM. Audio and video work fine, although I generally use phone audio because my bluetooth doesn't seem to work in the VM. It works fine on the host OS though. Also, I can use phone audio with the USB webcam on the PC providing the video and it works great.
• madrox 6y ago
  I remember, a long time ago, I went to a barcamp-style event hosted at Google in Mountain View. This was maybe a year after Google Maps was released. I forget how it came up, but at one of the sessions, an attendee got into a heated debate with a googler over whether it was ok that Google was able to release Google Maps to the world for free, essentially putting for-pay map services out of business. Apparently, Google Maps put this guy's startup out of business since there was no way to monetize anymore. Was Google Maps anti-competitive? Perhaps in the sense that it was incredibly hard to compete with, but that benefits the customer. And let's be real, it's not like Microsoft had never conceived of a chat client before Slack came around. Slack rode the chat trend. It didn't create it.
  • singhrac 6y ago
    It's funny how we've taken it for granted that the service of maps and routing (one I consider a technological marvel) is free just when Google starts to put ads in Maps. I guess it must have been hard to convince venture capital in 2005 to fund the innovation necessary (or, more likely, early Google engineers were incredibly good).
    • madrox 6y ago
      In 2005, the VC scene was very different. YC was doing its first year. Cloud computing wasn't really a thing yet. You had to have own your own metal if you were at any serious scale. What I left out of my original story was that a third engineer chimed in (from Yahoo!) that asked if the real enemy to innovation here wasn't the map-data companies whose terms made it impossible to leverage for innovation. The cost was prohibitively high to get started. It's really what kept innovation back in maps and affording it was what google's real advantage was. But that's a big reason why OpenStreetMaps exists today.
  • fgonzag 6y ago
    What happens if Google decides to exert its authority with its monopoly (charging a ton, charging businesses to appear, etc)? Now there is no service for customers to switch to. Anti competitive behavior benefits the customer as long as the company wants it that way. The moment it decides otherwise, customers hurt a lot more than they would have by paying for the service since its inception (where there would be alternatives to the service)
• bluejekyll 6y ago
  > Microsoft's Word/Excel monopoly is unbreakable Is this really true? For installed software this is true. But at least with everyone I work with, it’s all Google docs now. I was honestly floored the other day when I got a presentation in an email rather than a link to one online that could be collaborated with. Maybe I’m in a bubble, but I can’t imagine going back to Word or Excel.
  • kailswhales 6y ago
    Pretty sure you’re just not the intended user. Many in finance are pretty much forced to use Excel, and specifically on Windows because there’s functionality that isn’t available on OSX
  • hedora 6y ago
    We use a few things at work (including google docs by not office). Quip is by far the universal favorite. Its main advantage is that it presents an extremely good history of who said what when, and what parts of the document were updated. It also has a cross-document “inbox” of relevant updates. The main disadvantage is that we can’t use it with collaborators outside the company. I’m not sure if that’s specific to our company or a product limitation.
  • devtosales 6y ago
    In over 10 years I’ve rarely received a google drive doc / sheet or presso. Can’t imagine relying on those school child level tools to be honest. I’ve worked at SAP, Oracle, and a few large consultancies. Most of my customers are in the enterprise size range. Office is used heavily by the larger companies of the world and therefore is used by their software and service vendors. The only company I’ve ever worked with that was totally google drive was an American startup. Office is still very much the dominant suite of software across most companies although there are plenty of smaller American companies trying to work without it. I personally can’t tolerate the the lack of basic formatting that docs offers are how limited sheets and slides are. Just adding section numbers in docs needs an add on and if your collaborators don’t have the same add on they just add new sections without numbering. I can’t imagine large documents without numbering...
  • 6y ago
• bladegash 6y ago
  They kind of charge for Teams already, at least for some customers/users. In order to have a teleconference dial-in number, the user that created the conference has to have a license (I believe it’s somewhere around $10 p/mo). In my company, this is more or less a fundamental requirement if you interact in a customer facing role. Word and Excel integration is one thing. In my opinion, the integration with Outlook is the bigger selling point. I want to schedule a teams meeting with a customer? Create a calendar invitation and click a button to make it a Teams meeting. Dial-in information is then automatically placed in the invitation. That same meeting (and the rest of mg Outlook calendar) is also now synced with my calendar in Teams, so now I receive alerts in Teams when someone starts the meeting, the meeting start time, etc. Other services have integration with Outlook, but nothing like what Teams has, and to go against the grain a bit, that aspect of Teams’ UX is fantastic. I think one thing many are missing is a lot of new Teams users aren’t using it for the Slack-like features (e.g., channels). Most of the people I’ve worked with on teams over the last 6 months use it solely for direct messaging, file sharing, direct phone calls to coworkers, internal meetings, teleconferencing, etc. for those purposes, Teams’ UX is more than adequate and I actually prefer it over Slack. That is not to say it’s perfect though (dear Microsoft: please make changing input/output device settings more intuitive and well-behaved...).
  • tjayy 6y ago
    Zoom has most of this as well, one click creating meeting in calendar invite with all your dial in information Outlook reminders will say click to join zoom meeting. And the zoom client will have a list of your upcoming meetings
    • bladegash 6y ago
      Fair point, but I have used Zoom and GoToMeeting’s integrations with Outlook and there may be some similar (or identical) features, but the experience with Teams is a far more integrated experience in Outlook. Further, why leave the Microsoft O365 ecosystem if you’re already using it? Teams offers other capabilities and integrations that Zoom doesn’t have and the Teams integration does not require additional user action to add to Outlook (it’s there by default). Other value adds for enterprises include centralized identity/license/user management via the existing O365 admin portal/Azure AD, singular invoicing, consistent SLA with single vendor, etc. I haven’t looked into Zoom’s SSO integrations with things like AD or Azure AD, but again, that’s another example of resistance for enterprise customers/system administrators.