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Microsoft breached antitrust rules by bundling Teams and Office, EU says
- chucke1992 2y agoMaybe if Slack offered proper video conferencing tools it would not complain. Should ask Zoom for advice.
- mrweasel 2y agoIt think that one of the issues in this case. Teams rather terrible, but so is everything else. I worked for a company that used Google Chat internally and we'd use Teams with some clients. People kept telling me how much better Slack is, but now that I work for a company that does have Slack, I can't say that it's any better. In fact I'd probably rank Google Chat highest of those three options. Microsoft is giving people free replacement that is in some ways better (but with a worse interface). There's no point in NOT using Teams, when it's at least no much worse. In the same way where people are using Google Chat, or whatever it's called now, because they use GSuite / Google Workplace and the integration is really good. Teams just needs to be cheaper than Slack, unless Slack massively overhauls everything.
- chucke1992 2y agothe problem is that EU basically wants Teams to be more expensive so that Slack will become cheaper and thus more attractive. It is hilarious that Slack still has not been able to introduce proper video calls while introducing relatively useless integrations.
- mrweasel 2y agoIf Microsoft unbundles Teams, they can still make it available for free and nothing will have been resolved. I do agree with the EU that Teams should be unbundled, but unless you have a cheaper and/or better alternative I don't see it being all that effective. Teams also integrate into Active Directory and the whole Microsoft ecosystem in a way most other systems just doesn't do (not that they can't).
- chucke1992 2y agoTeams currently requires a separate license no? It is not free anymore with Microsoft 365. And that's thing - if slack was actually trying to add features and integrations that users actually wanted, it would not fail that much. I mean, Zoom succeeded without having anything except team conferencing...
- mirsadm 2y agoWhat are proper video calls? I can make video calls just fine in Slack.
- barryrandall 2y agoOr, like, people could just use both. I realize that means running yet another instance of Chrome, but it's 2024. Even Macs can multitask.
- immibis 2y ago[flagged]
- lxgr 2y ago[flagged]
- kotaKat 2y agoYep. We need to do Google. Every carrier has basically been coerced into using Google's hosted RCS service provider. https://jibe.google.com/ https://jibe.google.com/ Funny thing is the last I checked RCS still doesn't have any APIs/third party access and if you use a rooted device Google Messages will fail to send RCS even to the carrier's Jibe instance?
- lxgr 2y agoYep, and now there's also device attestation a.k.a. root/jailbreak detection. If you fail it, no RCS for you at all. What a great open standard! https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/1/24087418/google-messages-blocking-rcs-on-rooted-android-devices https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/1/24087418/google-messages-b...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- _heimdall 2y agoWhy is it okay for Office to include Word, Excel, or PowerPoint but not a chat application? Does the EU get to decide what is reasonably considered part of a productivity suite? Or is the only requirement that a competitor complains? This sure seems to say it's illegal to bundle any products together if a competitor for one of the products complains about it.
- kevsamuel 2y agoLegality is not science, most of the time, the definition of what's wrong is blurry and humans have to debate about it.
- _heimdall 2y agoLaws shouldn't be written without clear lines - how can a person who wants to avoid breaking the law do that if we have an ever growing list of laws full of gray area and blurry lines?
- snowpid 2y agodoes this concern your everyday life?
- _heimdall 2y agoBlurry lines and gray areas in law? Absolutely, I'd rather not accidentally break a law that is only defined after the fact in court.
- snowpid 2y agoNo do you have real problems with blurry laws in your country? (If so is this country in the EU?)
- _heimdall 2y agoThis is a really strange way to attempt to silence my opinion. Yes I do have issues with blurry laws. My current country is not in the EU, though until recently I was a resident of an EU country also with blurry laws. Am I allowed to have an opinion now?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- octocop 2y agoEU keeps on delivering today!
- echelon 2y agoDefaults and bundling are inherently unfair. Chrome shouldn't be bundled with Android. Google search shouldn't be the default. Google Wallet / Google Pay shouldn't be the default. Same for Apple and Microsoft. Apple Cash shouldn't be the default in Messages, ... the list goes on and on. Platform providers can easily attack businesses outside of their core business by setting defaults. They use these synergies to wield unfair power over hundreds of markets. Don't even get me started on how you now have to pay to protect your brand name in search across these platforms. The fact that you might appear fourth in search for your own brand name in the App Store or on Google is absurd.
- dghlsakjg 2y agoThe browser is a tricky one. It is the chicken that lays the rest of the eggs. I’m not going to tell my mom how to curl a copy of Brave onto her machine because no browser was provided.
- Nathanba 2y agoyes, would be unfair towards all the other http tools that arent curl if you bundle it
- threeseed 2y agoYou could make this argument about any bundling. All of the 365 products as well as similar from Adobe etc have been bundled in ways to lock out competition. Even Spotify is planning to. At some point EU needs to bring clarity to their competition laws and decide what they want the landscape to look like. Because right now they are just making up the rules as they go.
- Arainach 2y agoIt's legal to bundle products. It's not legal to use a monopoly in one area to leverage your way into another market.
- LordKeren 2y agoI will be the last person to ever say Adobe is above criticism, but until Adobe creates an entire AdobeOS, I’m not sure they’re in the same league as MS here
- sudosysgen 2y agoBundling is illegal in the EU if it used to abuse a dominant market position in one market to gain a competitive advantage in another. So what Adobe does, or what Spotify wants to do by bundling their own products within the same market, is far from the level of bundling Teams with Office, which is bundling across markets and where Office is extremely dominant. I don't think the EU is just making up the rules here, there are rules and this case is far more egregious and more clearly in violation than the examples you gave.
- amarcheschi 2y agoWhat do you mean by "making up the rules as they go"? Microsoft was found in breach of the Article 102 of the Treaty on the functioning of european union, which was last modified in 2007, and the article it infringed on abuse of dominant position was ratified in 2003. Furthermore, two other companies (one of which is american) complained to the european commission about Teams and only then an investigation was started
- NBJack 2y agoPerhaps, but Adobe and Spotify aren't offering a operating system where this crap is bundled. Neither do those examples have a 72% market share of PCs. Microsoft basically gave Teams away to corporate customers. Now, couple this fact with how many manufactures include a pre-installed copy Office 365 on consumer devices, add in this automatically included Teams since 2019, and you have a nasty combination. Bonus: Microsoft gets to inflate its numbers on adoption. Finally, Adobe Creative Cloud has roughly 30 million subscribers. Spotify has about 213 million subscribers. Windows, in general, has about 1.3 billion users.
- Neil44 2y agoThey don't just bundle it, they make it auto-start on screen on Windows machines whether you've got an account or not.
- jacobwilliamroy 2y agoIn Windows you can use the task manager to configure what programs are started with your computer.
- Matl 2y agoWhat that has to do with the OS vendor adding programs there that the users did not?
- ssahoo 2y agoNot a lot of people know and change that. The point is that they should not have autostarted without consent.
- dsalfdslfdsa 2y agoSounds like you don't have much experience with Windows and MS software. https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msteams/forum/all/why-does-teams-start-at-startup-when-disabled-in/e282ea9e-0778-4ac6-a079-358c71d32558 https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msteams/forum/all/why-do...
- jacobwilliamroy 2y agoI administer a Windows domain at my job that I do 40 hours a week so your assessment of me is just wrong and also offensive. I just restarted one of the workstations with Teams startup enabled and Teams ran when the computer restarted. Then I tried disabling Teams startup in the task manager on the same workstation and then restarted the workstation, and Teams hasn't started. I checked the startup tab in the task manager and Teams is still disabled after the restart. It hasn't appeared in the task manager either. This is Windows 10 Pro, so the behavior might be different on different versions/editions of Windows. Also this behavior might be affected by updates. These machines automatically install updates every Saturday, so they're running the latest Windows 10. Even if the setting is reset on a future update, I can create a GPO to disable it or even a scheduled task if I'm not allowed to manage this computer at the domain level.
- cjk2 2y agonow get them for the local account thing, onedrive integration, privacy and all the other shit.
- jncfhnb 2y agoSeems a little odd given that they unbundled it in Europe.
- LordKeren 2y agoRegulators likely decided it is worth it to create the precedent that they will be strictly examining Microsoft’s future app releases
- dacryn 2y agothat's what this is about, the EU warned MS to unbundle, and they are not impressed with how they have implemented it. Yes you can buy teams separate from office now, but MS is still clearly abusing their market dominance to force teams upon you (same about onedrive to be fair)
- jncfhnb 2y agoThe article is not clear to me. Is the complaint that Microsoft’s changes were not sufficient? Or is the complain that Microsoft’s behavior prior to the change is punishable now? The article states > The software giant unbundled Teams from Office in Europe last year in an attempt to address regulator concerns Which is a pretty generic statement that makes it hard to follow why they would be accused of bundling still
- vladvasiliu 2y agoHow so? I installed office on a computer the other day, and I had to jump through hoops to only install Excel (which is the only one I needed). By default it was installed and set to automatically start for all users.
- jncfhnb 2y agoThe article suggested that shouldn’t be the case in Europe. I suspect it wasn’t accurate
- flavius29663 2y agoI don't understand how Microsoft gets under fire so easily, but Google bundles everything in Android, and you can't even uninstall most of them (maps, gmail etc.). Same with iphones. This is regulatory tipping the balance.
- niek_pas 2y agoMicrosoft has an effective monopoly on business PCs. That may have something to do with it.
- HumblyTossed 2y agoYou may have missed it, but Apple is definitely bumping heads with the EU right now. And what do you mean you can't uninstall google maps and gmail? Are you using a Pixel?
- izacus 2y agoGoogle absolutely has come under fire for it and has to now show browser choice dialogs just like Microsoft in EU.
- Retric 2y agoThere’s android phones sold without any Google Apps, read up on LineageOS. Also both Apple and Android have come under fire about this stuff.
- arlcode 2y agoGoogle was just forced to introduce mandatory choice screens for browser, and search engines on android. The DMA also forces them to make all of these apps uninstallable.
- pif 2y agoYou'd expect them to have learnt the lesson with Internet Explorer but, as someone said, there is no way a man will understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it!
- LordKeren 2y agoThe Internet Explorer lawsuit was also 20 years ago
- wccrawford 2y agoAnd other companies have gotten away with bundling a lot of stuff since then. I could see why they think maybe the same ruling wouldn't happen today.
- rekoil 2y agoThere was no framework for fining them, each case would have to be handled separately, now there is such a framework in the DMA and DSA, which greatly simplifies the regulators jobs. I suspect that many other players are about to see such charges against them.
- red_trumpet 2y agoYou sure? From the article: > In 2009 Microsoft was also forced to implement a browser ballot box in its Windows operating system to ensure users were presented with a choice of web browsers, after years of Microsoft bunding Internet Explorer with Windows. Microsoft was then fined $730 million in 2013 for failing to include the browser ballot in Windows 7 SP1. That is 15 years at most, and 11 years for the most recent incident.
- LordKeren 2y agoYes, the lawsuit closed in 2001 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_C....
- endisneigh 2y agoSoon the EU will charge parents for giving their children undue advantages as well. In all seriousness - giving yourself an advantage is obviously what all companies want to do. Why doesn’t the EU just, for each company, say exactly what they want? I honestly don’t understand the EU - they don’t want any company to do anything to have an advantage compared to their competitors? Seems like an exercise in mediocrity. I guess par for the course given all of the EUs top companies were all started last century. Clearly out of touch. Edit: wow the top 15 EU companies by revenue are utilities or auto.
- quonn 2y agoAll EU countries indeed have systems in place to limit undue advantages that any child can have (it's called a public education system and social security and later in life just "the law"). As for anti-trust issues, you clearly don't understand them.
- endisneigh 2y agoYou’re correct. I am not an expert on anti trust, but I do see that the EU has missed the boat on every new industry in the 21st century compared to the USA. We will see in 100 years if regulation was the right move or not. As for education - I doubt all public education in the EU is equivalent, or tutoring is banned, or additional resources, etc.
- quonn 2y ago> I do see that the EU has missed the boat on every new industry in the 21st century compared to the USA. Perhaps. But for completely different reasons, certainly not regulation. And furthermore, while this _may_ hurt the EU in the long-run, they are still very good at the kind of industries that employ a large number of people across all skillsets. > We will see in 100 years if regulation was the right move or not. No need to wait, we can see this right now. The internet and app economy is completely enshittified. Only regulation can fix this, the market had 20 years and it only got worse.
- 2y ago
- bongodongobob 2y agoWhat market are they monopolizing by having Teams auto start?
- b800h 2y agoCollaboration tooling. It's particularly egregious as - particularly once you get past 250 members of staff - it's a plainly inferior product. https://www.statista.com/chart/20028/daily-active-users-of-slack-and-microsoft-teams/ https://www.statista.com/chart/20028/daily-active-users-of-s...
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoWhere do they allege monopoly?
- worksonmine 2y agoI hate on Microsoft every chance I get, but how is this situation different than Google bundling Meet on Android? Should Google be worried?
- seszett 2y agoI don't think Meet is bundled with Android by Google, it's not there if you use LineageOS. It's probably an individual choice by phone makers (although maybe not a completely free choice). I do agree it shouldn't be bundled of course. But even Chrome isn't bundled for example, so I don't think Google is actually pushing many apps.
- londons_explore 2y agoIt's bundled with all the other Google apps - eg. The play store, docs, search etc. OEM's have to ship them all or none of them.
- aniforprez 2y agoI've never ever had Meet bundled with any of my phones in my years of using android. On my latest S22, obviously the play store is there but the only other core Google apps that were installed were calendar, chrome, fit, Gmail, Google (the main "app" that probably bundles in the assistant and stuff like that), play music, maps and a couple of others. There was no meet and I can still uninstall calendar
- dacryn 2y agoI have been on android for 10+ years and never has Meet gotten in my way or even launched itself. It's totally uncomparable. Also google is not actively pushing it's customers to use it to kill their competitors
- shkkmo 2y agoI don't think Meet is bundled with Android. My pixel didn't come with it. It is bundled with some chromebooks.
- 2y ago
- ssahoo 2y agoWhy don't they apply the laws universally and effectively make this kind of bundling illegal for mega corporations? For endusers, it feels like they are playing with different rules for Microsoft Apple Adobe and Google. Since EU waits until the damage is done and milks them, it barely helps the situation for consumers. For corps they just assume the penalty as cost of doing business.
- petesergeant 2y agoBecause it’s expensive and complicated to bring civil suits against organizations with that many lawyers
- gostsamo 2y agoBecause this is not bundling of features, but of market products. Here the bundling merges two markets which are not related, while it might make sense to bundle word and excel for example which are parts of an office suite while teams is totally different business solution.
- falcor84 2y agoHow do you define "not related" - why would a collaboration tool not be considered part of something called "office suite"? Also to the parent's point, why is it that Google are allowed to bundle Meet as part of their Google Workspace - it does seem like the violations are only applied based on retroactive decisions.
- gostsamo 2y agoGenerally, you define a market by the market participants. There are people who need only the the office suite, and there are those who need the office suite and the colab chat but not necessarily by the same provider. This is visible by the fact that you have colab software providers like slack/zoom. Microsoft is targeted at the moment because they are market leader on the office suite market and they are leveraging this position to capture the colab software one. Google is not a market leader and in addition, they don't have offline tools to separate from their workspace, though this is less significant than the market dominance.
- okasaki 2y ago[flagged]
- vincnetas 2y agoYou suggest that US government would go to war against its main allies to protect business interests of a software company?
- nikp123 2y agoGiven that banana countries were a thing, I think it wouldn't be completely out of character for the US to enforce it's (it's own companies) interests. But I don't think it will be war, but rather soft-power.
- okasaki 2y agoWar? The EU didn't start a war when the US blew up nordstream 2. In fact they spent a lot of time nervously pointing at everyone except the US (who said they would blow it up). It's a totally abusive and subservient relationship. But then again the US doesn't allow the EU to have software companies, so they might not care that the data that would go to Teams is being hovered by a different US company instead.
- robertlagrant 2y ago> the US doesn't allow the EU to have software companies ...pardon?
- sham1 2y ago> War? The EU didn't start a war when the US blew up nordstream 2. As people, who most likely are outside of the intelligence community, we don't know who blew up NS2. Current lead suspect is Ukraine, although speculation ranges from the US to the Russians doing it themselves. Of course, if there's some substancial evidence aside from "Biden said something one time", I'm sure people would be interested. But before such evidence is presented, this conspiracy theory doesn't really hold water. But let's entertain the idea some. Assuming that CIA or whatever did do it (again, need more evidence), why would they a) do it again, and b) do it for the sake of Microsoft of all things? At least NS2 can easily be seen as a strategic liability. Meanwhile, it'd be pretty nearsighted to do this kind of an op just because Microsoft is being held liable for bundling Teams and abusing its dominant market position with it.
- sunaookami 2y agoI already know how this will be solved: Microsoft will pay a (small) fine and file it under "the cost of doing business" while the damage is already done. Teams is one of the absolutely worst products ever programmed, it's hiliarious how bad it is. It only reached its market share because Microsoft gave it away "for free" with Office 365 or MS 365 or whatever it's called now.
- PM_me_your_math 2y ago[dead]
- EasyMark 2y agoDon’t these “actions”usually include separating the products out the way the EU wants them?aka don’t include Teams in EU installs of MS office or don’t even include office at all? Otherwise a fine is useless.
- sunaookami 2y agoDoesn't matter if everyone already uses Teams and the damage is done. Look at Netscape vs IE.
- Auracle 2y agoYet we’d absolutely balk at a computer or phone not coming with a browser by default nowadays. I don’t really think that ruling was on the right side of history.
- Qwertious 2y agoThat's because the browser is a de-facto OS, which occurred only due to a sheer lack of actual OS market innovation - Debian had a package manager 20 years ago, Windows didn't until 2019. Browsers succeeded because apps ("websites") abstracted away the download/install process in a user friendly fashion. That ruling's only fault was that it didn't go far enough in hammering Microsoft's anticompetitive "moat" practices.
- swsieber 2y agoVery similar to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40787842 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40787842 on the front page today.
- barryrandall 2y agoOh well. I guess it's time for Microsoft to discontinue Teams, destroy any related IP, purge any copies from GitHub/developer workstations/backups, forcibly uninstall it from end-user machines, update Windows to forcibly delete any copies installed in the future, and never, ever, ever under any circumstances try to compete in the chat/video conferencing market ever again. The world will survive, if just barely.
- BigJono 2y agoWhat would I ever do without my software engineering team collaboration tool that can't send a fucking code snippet without burning half the screen on whitespace and a 400px font size title lol
- initplus 2y agoAnd that’s the upgraded version. Previously it just… wasn’t possible at all?
- bornfreddy 2y agoWe should not mock MS though. This is a really difficult feature to get it right the first time around. /s
- phito 2y agoMy god yes. It's so, so bad...
- daemonologist 2y agoI've taken to sending code snippets as regular message text with the monospaced font, because the code snippets feature is so awkward and slow (and sometimes won't load for the recipient at all).
- Phelinofist 2y agoI mostly use "> " for this, but that might hit the message length restriction, then you are forced to use the snippet thing.
- markus_zhang 2y agoThey should get rid of Edge and a few other stuffs too. Is there a tool to conveniently remove any feature I do not want? Googled around and looks like Powershell is my only reliable option -- and still I cannot remove Edge.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 2y ago"Debloater" is the term you probably want to search for.
- markus_zhang 2y agoThanks! I'll try them out. I did remember running one of these after the installation so maybe some updates bring back the bloaters.
- xyzzy_plugh 2y agoI thought this was going to be about bundling Teams in O365 and other biz deals. It's wild to me that Teams is so fucking horrible that many businesses who effectively get it for free as part of other dealings still choose to pay for Slack. Sadly I know of many, many more companies where the offer is indeed too good to refuse, much to the disappointment of their workforce. I was helping out at a place where two employees needed Word and Excel licenses, and somehow they got a massive, free Teams license out of it.
- dacryn 2y agoit's because teams is not really free It's free per user, but it's quite expensive if you start adding meeting rooms, voip, webinar, ... Zoom+slack are literally cheaper in total, but the startup cost is very visible and teams startup cost is 0.
- nolok 2y agoOh it's not even free per user. The moment the EU opened an investigation [1], they reacted [2] by getting it out of their bundle pack [3], and offering it on the side instead, with the new bundles being marked "[bundle name] EEA NO TEAMS", and teams being priced 5€/user/month. At least I guess kudos to Microsoft for learning a trick Facebook/Meta/Apple keep ignoring, the moment they say it coming they switched gear because they know the EU won't buy their "good for the user" thing. > Today we are announcing proactive changes that we hope will start to address these concerns in a meaningful way, even while the European Commission’s investigation continues and we cooperate with it. These changes will impact our Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites for business customers in the European Economic Area and Switzerland. They are designed to address two concerns that are central to the Commission’s investigation: (1) that customers should be able to choose a business suite without Teams at a price less than those with Teams included; and (2) that we should do more to make interoperability easier between rival communication and collaboration solutions and Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites. They also made it extra annoying to switch from a regular package to that one, and somehow when you search on products in your admin (if you're already a customer) you need to know what to type for those no teams bundle to show up. [1] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/api/files/document/print/en/ip_23_3991/IP_23_3991_EN.pdf https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/api/files/docume... [2] https://blogs.microsoft.com/eupolicy/2023/08/31/european-competition-teams-office-microsoft-365/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/eupolicy/2023/08/31/european-com... [3] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/licensing/news/microsoft365-teams-eea https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/licensing/news/microsoft365-...
- rufius 2y agoI’m curious what materially changed beyond Slack complaining. Microsoft has long bundled Lync/Skype-for-Business with Office 365. Hell it did that, I’m pretty sure, before Slack even existed.
- thinkindie 2y agoskype for business didn't really take off as much as team now. Team spread like a cancer like nothing else before.
- rufius 2y agoFair enough - also lol at people downvoting. It was an honest question.
- elevatedastalt 2y agoSo if they had bundled a shitty software that would have been more OK than then bundling a software that people want to use more?
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoOfficial EU commission release: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_3446 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_...
- lccerina 2y agoAnd I guess the next one will be OpenAI trash (aka Bing chat enterprise or something) bundled in O365
- jwnin 2y agoThe Copilot meeting summary features in Teams are actually pretty good. It's far more likely that someone will quickly skim the meeting summary than sit through an hour long meeting recording. Costs extra, though.
- robotnikman 2y agoThis I do agree with. While AI feels like it has been shoved in many places it doesn't fit so well, it is amazing when it comes to quickly summarizing meetings.
- ReptileMan 2y agoI never understood how Microsoft giving you software you are not forced to use is bad, but apple limiting which software you can run on your device is not. From anti user perspective MS does a lot worse than adding teams - mandatory online accounts to begin with.
- falcor84 2y ago> mandatory online accounts It's not mandatory - there's a simple 11-step sequence of hacks that if executed correctly will let you create an offline user /s. [0] https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/install-windows-11-without-microsoft-account https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/install-windows-11-witho...
- callc 2y ago> how Microsoft giving you software you are not forced to use is bad This does not represent the actual reality where MS crams their products down users’ orifices - like so many other companies do too. > but apple limiting which software you can run on your device is not This is also bad. Users deserve the respect and right to have general purpose computing platforms be open. Edit: whitespace
- noneeeed 2y ago> apple limiting which software you can run on your device is not If you are talking about iOS and the app store, that is another ongoing battle between the European Commission and Apple. It has been reported here on HN a number of times recently.
- ReptileMan 2y agoAware of that but it should have started 15 years ago.
- miohtama 2y agoAsk forgiveness. Did Microsoft already wipe out Slack during these four years of bundling since the complaint of 2020?
- sirspacey 2y agoEffectively yes. They sold to Salesforce for $30B, but they easily could have won the market if not for this move on Microsoft’s part.
- eysgshsvsvsv 2y agoThere is no could have been in reality. Laws of physics was not broken since Slack was invented. You are reducing a complex system of economics, technology, market, phycology, politics etc into a sentence "could have been". It sounds smart and logical but it has no existential relevance.
- pie420 2y agohopefully this time, the DOJ is not merciful and breaks Microsoft into 3-4 different entities.
- bogwog 2y agoAll they gotta do is split Office into its own independent company, and so many problems will start to solve themselves.
- Aerbil313 2y agoThey don't need to: https://i.insider.com/4e0b340dcadcbbdd35120000?width=750&format=jpeg&auto=webp https://i.insider.com/4e0b340dcadcbbdd35120000?width=750&for...
- joduplessis 2y agoAdjacent point, but I recently bought a Windows laptop (after 10 years on Mac). I've been blown away by the sheer amount of advertising & upsells at OS level. Some of it you can turn off, but others you can't seem to (for me at least). I don't ever remember Windows feeling like you're borrowing it from MS.
- dawnerd 2y agoSeriously. I thought Mac was getting bad but upgraded to win 11 on my gaming pc. How is that acceptable for business environments? One wrong click and you’ve got a new subscription it seems.
- EasyMark 2y agoBusiness versions are stripped of that stuff in my experience, no? The home version is rife with it. I haven’t been on windows in a few years though.
- sqeaky 2y agoI left windows for Linux back in the middle of the XP days. I came back to this for contracting work and setting up a shared VR gaming computer in the living room. The absolute shit level of treatment windows users tolerate is mindboggling. On the corporate laptops I am lent the advertising is generally minimal, but non-zero, and that surprised me. If I search I don't want whatever you are selling I want files on this computer or maybe documents on the corporate network. That struck me as inappropriate, but the constant bombard of noise on the personal computer is outrageous. Ads in the start menu, news going to sites with ads, popups, and that is before software, steam has its own too, but at least it moderates to one ad each launch. Installing Gentoo is easier than avoiding ads on windows.
- joduplessis 2y agoI need Windows for work, but same - dual booted Ubuntu right away.
- lawlessone 2y ago
- indiantinker 2y agoHate teams! I have heard many friends quit companies as they could not stand using teams after companies abandoned slack to jump on the free teams bandwagon. They had to hire Microsoft experts to manage the IT infrastructure which was just auto-managed before Microsoft sold them the stack.
- mikestew 2y agoI have heard many friends quit companies as they could not stand using teams I could believe that one might have a friend that is privileged enough (and petty enough) to quit over such trivialities. But “many”? Color me…skeptical.
- vundercind 2y agoI’ve moved to a place with it and if they’re remote workers, I could see it. It’s really bad for remote work, in the sense that it simply discourages effective chat communication patterns for teams (yes, Teams is bad for teams). I could absolutely see that getting bad enough that someone would leave, largely because the tools the company selected were wrecking communication and making everything miserable.
- swozey 2y agoAt the height of Covid I know a bunch of companies that started using Teams to effectively monitor their employee idle time at PCs. Teams had a much more robust admin/usage reporting system. That's when those little mouse jigglers started showing up all over Amazon to keep your machine from appearing idle. I'm in a decent amount of engineering social channels and while I never heard someone leave specifically for that i could see it. I absolutely saw people not take jobs because of it. Which, considering all of the layoffs and how the markets going now, I miss having that power.
- miked85 2y agoI don't think it's all that petty. Teams is really bad, and if you have to deal with it daily, time to find another job.
- 2y ago
- throwitaway222 2y agoMore countries should exit
- EasyMark 2y agoExit what?
- outside1234 2y agoWait, so then is it ALSO illegal to tie FaceTime to iOS? And whatever the Google thing is called with Gmail?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- djha-skin 2y agoIf you "just want chat" but are required to use Teams at work, you might try pidgin[1] with the MS Teams plugin[2]. The former can be installed via scoop and therefore does not require admin priveleges to install. This thing still works, and works better than ever, with plugin for modern chat services available. 1: https://www.pidgin.im/ https://www.pidgin.im/ 2: https://github.com/EionRobb/purple-teams https://github.com/EionRobb/purple-teams
- vladvasiliu 2y agoI started having a bit of hope, until I read the cons : > Doesn't support calls, provides direct links to the Teams website
- EionRobb 2y agoI'll get there one day ;( The frontend/backend split of Pidgin/libpurple makes this tricky, and we still don't have voice and video in a Windows release (my main dev OS these days)
- vladvasiliu 2y ago> The frontend/backend split of Pidgin/libpurple makes this tricky, and we still don't have voice and video in a Windows release Is that specifically for Teams, or is it a general limitation of libpurple?
- crowcroft 2y agoWhat's the difference between anti-competitive bundling, and developing seamless integrated experiences? If this is anti-competitive, is it anti-competitive for Apple to bundle music features/up-sell into the iOS UI, or provide an interface for headphones that no other manufacturer can integrate with?
- talldayo 2y ago> What's the difference between anti-competitive bundling, and developing seamless integrated experiences? The availability of APIs for third-party developers to create a similar competing experience.
- stock_toaster 2y agoAlso an actual monopoly (windows OS).
- crowcroft 2y agoI think that's a completely fair distinction. Do you draw the line at APIs? Should Apple be forced to sell H1 chips and let other headphone makers create the same experience as AirPods?
- bongodongobob 2y agoThere is one, you can add all sorts of third party add-ons to Teams.
- talldayo 2y agoBut can your app be integrated into Windows with equal footing as Teams?
- bongodongobob 2y agoI don't even know what that means.
- moontear 2y ago
- tremon 2y agoThese rulings happen way too late, the damage is already done.
- tsunamifury 2y agoJust wait till they find out about how the enterprise deals work. Free windows licenses with Office 365, with retroactive blowup clauses that charge the back-dated windows licensing fees if you ever stop using Office 365
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoLiterally everything from Microsoft is bundled in some anti competitive way. Edge and Windows. Teams and Office. Excel and Word. GitHub and VS. One Drive and Windows. All of it must be forced to split up and operate as separate companies. It is the ONLY way to not distort the market. Additionally, fines must be enacted RETROACTIVELY, along with jail time for executives. Enough is enough.
- cgh 2y agoThis. At the least, Office et al should be spun off. The US has lost the will to split up anticompetitive companies.
- RicoElectrico 2y agoGood. In our small company of two dozen people we use Teams only because of external clients. Otherwise we do away with Google Workspace and self-hosted stuff like GitLab.
- chucke1992 2y agoso "I hate teams but I use another bundled thing" lol
- shrimp_emoji 2y agoTo be fair, anything is better than Teams.
- bigpeopleareold 2y agoThe EU step is complete. Now get all your co-workers and random people in your company to stop scheduling stuff in Teams (better yet, just stop having meetings - a day of them gets mind-numbing, having them practically every day is painful.)
- ant6n 2y agoFor the cost of zoom, i get teams, office and a boat load of cloud storage. The software is crap, but the deal is hard to beat. Kind of weird how MS keeps undermining their product offering with their stupid shannanigans.
- PM_me_your_math 2y ago[dead]
- paweladamczuk 2y agoMaybe a push to eliminate proprietary operating systems and file formats from government-supported processes would be more effective? It could be legislative but it could also mean governments supporting FOSS development more. Maybe it's wishful thinking, but this just seems to me like treating the symptoms instead of the root cause.
- Daishiman 2y agoCapitalism naturally tends towards the concentration of large firms unless regulated; if anything the regulatory intervention is coming in too late.
- joe_the_user 2y ago"More effective" at what? The state using FOSS is great but that seems quite orthogonal to preventing monopoly abuse by proprietary software vendors. We can do both. Edit: I think you may be implying that having a variety of choices available would sufficient to prevent monopolies. That's not true as long as you have multiple companies able to cooperate in doing things like bundling, etc.
- practicemaths 2y agoI think the EU can & may be doing both. AFIK, at least a few countries & research entities over there are using FOSS, at least in part, as well as promoting it. Hypothetically just because a Government is using FOSS to operate does not mean a company can not still break antitrust rules.
- naikrovek 2y agoHere’s the thing, though: Linux as a desktop is absolute trash and it doesn’t matter if you have been using it as a desktop operating system for 30 years, it’s still absolutely trash for anyone with an idea of what a desktop OS should be. It is trash in the exact same way that GIMP is trash compared to professional tools. The quality just isn’t there, and the quality will never be there so long as design decisions are made by anything resembling a democracy. The open source model works for code. It does not work for design, and open source developers somehow believe they are as good of a designer as they are a developer, and that has never been true for anyone, ever. Asking that someone be forced to switch to Linux from Windows or Mac is akin to forcing them to use GIMP instead of Photoshop, and if that sounds like a perfectly fine thing to you, you are blind to some very important things. Being blind to those things is fine so long as you’re aware of that blindness.
- adam_arthur 2y agoGovernment should just require open communication protocols/file formats, if a competitor is willing to host the same data at cost. Client applications should compete on their individual merits, not coast on protocol lock-in. Would WhatsApp or YouTube have as many users if others could build clients for the same data? (PII etc notwithstanding) Protocols compete on the merits of the protocol, clients compete on the merits of the client. I think this will be the reality/obvious a few decades down the line.
- jad 2y agoCompanies can iterate on their products much faster if they're not required to publish all of their functionality as public APIs. Once the APIs have been published, it's much harder for them to be changed. Doing this also puts them at the mercy of whether or not client applications are willing to support their new functionality. Maybe YouTube wants clients to adopt some feature, but a powerful client application doesn't like that feature and so won't support it. The protocol/platform lock-in is a problem, but preserving companies' ability to iterate quickly on features is also very important.
- BoredPositron 2y agoSome guy at Google who worked on like 14 chat apps over the last two decades might just welcome it...
- adam_arthur 2y agoThe company doesn't need to expose custom APIs on their data. If they implement a chat protocol, they must allow other clients to interface with it. For the data side, likely any requirements wouldn't go into effect until a dataset is deemed sufficiently large/societally important, and there could be a period of exclusivity similarly to the patent system to encourage innovation. This system works very well for new drug creation, with competitors free to copy the drug for pennies on the dollar after patent expiry, so I very much doubt it would stifle innovation in tech, especially given the lower capital requirements to innovate. I'm not suggesting at all the government mandates private companies implement a public write api into their own datacenter. I'm suggesting the privately hosted data must be replicatable and thus hostable by competitors. Likely the practical way to do this, technically, is to support a public kafka/persistent eventing system such that anybody can firehose all historical and new data. Ideally with funding help. Hosting data is cheaper than ever, and continues to deflate in cost. The companies in this line of fire are already quasi-monopoly behemoths, so I don't buy into the cost-prohibitive/stifling innovation perspective.
- TheCycoONE 2y agoWhy are the tying laws not enforced in the US, or Canada, or the many other jurisdictions where it's illegal for a monopoly to tie products together; and why does it not apply to the tying of Word and Excel or other apps in the Office suite that use to be sold independently and complete with independent products (Lotus 123, Wordperfect)
- Jerry2 2y ago>Why are the tying laws not enforced in the US, or Canada Regulatory capture and legalized corruption aka "lobbying".
- datadeft 2y agoNo shit. The only real surprise is that it took years for gov officials to recognize this. On the other hand, Teams is the worst thing that could have happened to work communication efficiency.
- ohcmon 2y agoNeeded Word on Mac – you can’t imagine how surprised I was to see Skype starting too.
- antihero 2y agoWhen a company’s initial interview is on Teams I see it as a bad sign. If a company forces you to use Windows for your dev machine it’s a red flag. If a company forces you to use a Citrix instance for your dev machine honestly run away screaming and take your sanity with you.
- tombert 2y agoI've had a few interviews that use Teams, but I've always just used the browser version, and it worked fine on a Mac and Linux last time I tried it.
- antihero 2y agoYou can do that, but if you get the job you’ll likely be having to use it for a lot more stuff. It’s a sign of a culture that wants to bundle stuff up and manage it in the corporate way as opposed to using the tools that people want to use to do their job.
- elevatedastalt 2y agoSo what product should they have been using instead? Meet, which is a Google bundle? Or the China owned Zoom, or god forbid Webex?
- tombert 2y agoWe used WebEx a lot at Apple. It was pretty terrible when I first started with a really bizarre client, but when it was updated to the more modern one in ~2019/2020, I didn't think it was so bad, more or less like every other VoIP program. I still kind of viscerally hate it because I associate it with the boring and useless meetings that the middle-managers at Apple loved to schedule to justify their existence in the company, but that's not really WebEx's fault.
- antihero 2y agoSlack, Meet, Zoom. Teams tries to be the default chat app and video app and sucks at both.
- dudeinhawaii 2y agoAwesome, now do Adobe and Autodesk next. How is Creative Cloud not an anti-competitive bundle under the same description? Why do we ignore the particularly egregious exploiters of customers? Should Apple computers not have messenger built in? Should Google Workspace remove Meet? What are the actual rules because they seem to just apply to whomever the EU wants to shake down any given year.
- PaulHoule 2y agoOffice is bad enough. One reason we’re stuck with the very bad Excel (gives wrong answers) is that you got Office because you want to use less offensive products like Word and Powerpoint so you already bought Excel.
- drewcoo 2y agoIf the EU is working on a time machine, Lotus Notes might be their next target!
- jtdev 2y ago[dead]
- jimnotgym 2y agoIt is a common comment on HN to say Teams is rubbish and also to ask why anyone would use it. Now we have a problem of market dominance, which demonstrates by how far the HN bubble misunderstands how ordinary people do their day to day business. This is the vacuum MS have been consistently winning in for several decades now, it would be worth you understanding it. Now someone is about to reply that market dominance doesn't mean your app is best. If you think that in this case then you are still missing the lesson. Teams integrates with Windows OS, Azure AD, SharePoint, OneDrive, PowerPoint and Outlook in a way that is so much more useful to ordinary people than anything the other messengers do. Much of that integration is available to any app developer but they choose not to use them so continue to fall behind. Sure there will be some things Slack are not currently getting an API for, but so so much more that they don't use but could, because they don't see why it is important for users.
- jiggawatts 2y ago> choose not to use them This is definitely a problem in general for the open-source / Silicon Valley crowd. In this case however the integrations you describe aren’t possible for a third party. Microsoft has made it absurdly difficult to extend and integrate with Office, and they regularly use anti-competitive (and anti-consumer!) methods to “push” new products via first-party integration. A random example: One drive is the default save location in MS Office apps. This can’t be turned off or customised back to local files by end-users. I have to jump through hoops every time I save a file because some product manager at Microsoft has a KPI tied their bonus.
- jimnotgym 2y agoRather than a random example, that is an excellent example of something the competition people should focus on. SharePoint is auwful. OneDrive plus SharePoint is awesome on Windows and Mac. Here are some random examples of things Teams does that are easy to copy from memory. + Azure AD integration without making it an enterprise pricing feature. SSO is such an important feature, and yet most apps seem to charge extra for it, and so price themselves out. Make sure your app privileges can be controlled by AzureAD groups. + Grab the org chart from Azure AD. Who does Joe Bloggs work for, who are his team. Where does he work. What is his mobile number + Sync the Calendar properly! Put my new meeting in Outlook properly.
- georgeecollins 2y agoTeams is a pain in the neck! If you make an office calendar appointment for a zoom, Microsoft "helps" you by creating a teams invite in the text of the invitation that gets sent out. So there is always a chance someone you invite will click on the wrong link to be in the meeting. If you ever click on this link yourself teams will install on your system and try in the run in the background every time you boot your computer. This is just hostile to the consumer. If I want teams I can install it.
- hifromwork 2y agoThe only thing I can think of when reading this is the "damn, you live like this?" meme. I can't imagine using OS that does this to you and not being angry all the time (I'm not tribalistic, Linux has its own set of infuriating problems, but at least it feels like I'm in control).
- smt88 2y agoThis is specifically an Outlook issue, not Windows. The problem is the enterprise addiction to Outlook/Exchange that prevents employees from choosing a different email client.
- cosmojg 2y agoMany workplaces will restrict your choice of operating system and email client.
- hx8 2y agoI ask about the tools I will be using during the interview process. There are several that I refuse to work with and will end the interview at the next possible polite point if they are required. Microsoft Windows is on my blacklist. The entire point of private retirement accounts and transferable skills is that you aren't required to stick with one employer. If your employer requires you to use bad tools then find a better employer.
- 2y ago
- htrp 2y agoThe zombie corpse of slack welcomes this ruling
- xzjis 2y agoThe problem is that it's already too late. In my company, we used Teams because it was "free" (they even added a free version that lasted between COVID-19 and 2023), bundled with everything else, and now that we have to pay for Teams alone, we won't consider switching to something else because people are used to Teams. We never considered an alternative, and we will never consider one, and it's just more expensive for us now (which is Microsoft's way of complying with EU's rules, so Microsoft's fault). Antitrusts are too slow to happen.
- Rastonbury 2y agoHate to break it to you but even if they broke out pricing and SKU, the MS rep is going to offer Teams a separate product and majority of the time bosses will buy it out of convenience. Why bother evaluating slack/zoom when mail, calendar, files,call recording and transcript are integrated with Teams especially for old school companies
- arnvald 2y agoIn some companies yes, but in other ones when comparing two similarly priced products, the decision will be made based on something else than just a budget. Currently often the narrative is “we have it included for $0, why would we pay $100 per year per employee for a similar product?”
- quitit 2y agoExactly this, the current top comment decries how their sales were affected by Teams, but there is no moat on video-calling software. Without a unique proposition disruption was bound to come knocking. Apple bundles Team's-like functionality with FaceTime, but it's not being targeted. The EU's position is largely driven from who is successful. But what is success? Anyone who has a pre-existing relationship with the customer is going to be able to have the opportunity to inform the customer about their new products, brand trust and convenience go a long way in co-selling. People that make basic apps frequently complain that they have had their app "stolen" when a, typically larger, competitor releases similar functionality. However was it truly their "idea", or were they just an early entrant that squandered their early lead? The majority of ordinary computing functions of today started out as 3rd party applications, some churn is expected - I don't see it as innovation if we give companies false monopolies on ideas. If Apple can't protect the iPhone paradigm as a unique combination of features, no one should expect to keep possession of simpler or smaller ideas.
- farhadhf 2y agoThis essentially killed my (EU-based) startup in the project management and collaborate space. Before MSFT bundled Teams with O365 we were rapidly growing and closing enterprise customers in the automotive, energy and education industries with high retention rates. Right around the time the Teams bundling started our retention dropped, churn went through the roof, growth slowed down, we failed to raise our next round because of it and had to drastically downsize the company, causing even more churn (about 80% net churn in 2 years). This move by the EU is good, but too little too late - 99% of the companies that were hurt by this have already shut down, and the ones still running will take years to recover...
- zelphirkalt 2y agoIn a just world, they will of course have to pay for all the damages ... In a just world I said.
- Supermancho 2y ago> This move by the EU is good, but too little too late Not to say damage didn't occur or that MSFT has a good track record of adhering to rulings, but it's potentially not too late for those in the future who could benefit.
- zelphirkalt 2y agoI mean, if someone is physically harmed it is also too late, but still the law has the perpetrator pay potentially huge amounts or for the rest of their lives.
- Supermancho 2y ago> the law has the perpetrator pay potentially huge amounts or for the rest of their lives. As long as the law already existed Either a law is inherently useful, or it is not. No need to cry about abuses in the 1800 regarding laws being passed today. The proposal is to fix a situational problem, not a physical one.
- Wolfenstein98k 2y agoThe EU exists to subsidise EU businesses by taxing (fining) American ones. Why is it okay to sell a bundle that has spreadsheets and emails but not messaging and conferencing?
- tyingq 2y agoI believe the general category of antitrust is "tying agreements" where you tie a weaker market share product to a stronger one. Also, I'm not arguing why it's okay, just that it's a normal part of antitrust law and not specific to the EU. The US FTC has an example on this page: https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/tying-sale-two-products https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...
- switch007 2y agoHow do EU fines subsidise EU businesses? https://competition-policy.ec.europa.eu/index/fines_en https://competition-policy.ec.europa.eu/index/fines_en : > Fines imposed on undertakings found in breach of EU antitrust rules are paid into the general EU budget. This money is not earmarked for particular expenses, but Member States' contributions to the EU budget for the following year are reduced accordingly. The fines therefore help to finance the EU and reduce the burden for taxpayers.
- bearjaws 2y agoNobody would use Teams over Slack (especially from 2019-2022) if it wasn't part of O365. My company switched us off of it and it sucked. But it was included in our E5 licenses :)
- Khaine 2y agoMore importantly, could the EU get Microsoft to actually fix Teams so that it isn't a giant pile of shit.
- Aeolun 2y agoI’m afraid this won’t convince my enterprise that now they do not have to scrap that annoying Slack line item.
- ec109685 2y agoGoogle’s inability to create a chat app allowed them to dodge this bullet.
- djbusby 2y agoGoogle did this with Meet. Bundled, over-ride zoom invite with Meet and other stuff that seems very similar to these MS moves. Wonder how/why they don't get similar treatment.
- crmd 2y agoI would like to see US regulators bring the hammer down on “platform” tech companies who leverage their power in one market, such as operating systems, to gain massive, unearned competitive advantage in unrelated markets.
- jeanlou 2y agoTo me these type of cases has always been BS, especially since not every company gets the same treatment. Next, they should ask Tesla to give its customers the choice of the autopilot software its car runs...
- an-allen 2y agoIMO, Teams is a logical extension of the Office tool suite and had every right to be bundled. I suspect there is a whole bevvy of bureaucrats in the EU whos sole job has been to bring anti trust legislation against Microsoft for the last 30 years - somehow funding itself, not preventing a Monopoly, and failing to create a more competitive marketplace.
- boxed 2y agoThis was confusing to read. Are you pro-monopoly? That's the only way I can read this...
- an-allen 2y agoI’m pro features that make sense for digital workers and Teams is just a set of features that make sense. My comment is more about how ineffective this type of rent seeking has been against Microsoft for the last 3 decades.
- boxed 2y agoIt "makes sense" only after Slack made it make sense. I agree that the regulation has been incompetent. That's a different matter though. In this case, the reaction was way too slow. The war is already over and now they start to move troops.
- TZubiri 2y agoMcdonalds breached antitrust by bundling fries and coke.
- jillesvangurp 2y agoIt's a common pattern at several of the big software companies to bundle a lot of freemium stuff with their paid core products that then ends up squeezing independent providers of similar stuff. I love Github. Before MS bought it I was a CTO at a company where we happily paid for it. Now MS offers it for free. I don't currently pay them anything. We also use Github actions. We don't pay for that either. You get 2000 free build minutes per month. So no need. That's great for us of course. But it's horrible for independent providers of CI services, which I used in the past. How can you compete when big companies like MS just pretend build minutes and hosting the world's software projects costs 0$? I say pretend here because of course in reality MS spends a lot of money on all that infrastructure needed to do that. But they make their money elsewhere. This is just an anti competitive move to ensure enough customers end up paying them. It's a lock in mechanism. But it's also an anti competitive move. It ensures competitors don't stand a chance. Because how do you compete with free? Of course the flip side is that a lot of things in software become commodities where the price of something goes to zero quickly after the open source world starts providing free and open source alternatives. Zoom is a great example of a commodity with little intrinsic software value. There's very little in there that you can't replicate with free and OSS components. Most of the real cost relates to infrastructure and networking. Which of course like Github isn't actually free. So MS is subsidizing the cost of having massive amounts of companies run all their meetings on Teams with money they squeeze out of them elsewhere via unrelated products. That's what the EU called out as anti competitive. Microsoft spends many millions/billions on ensuring people get locked into their free offerings just so they can continue to be valued at trillions because of all the revenue they get from us elsewhere. This is not charity. That's how they became this big. IMHO Gitlab would have strong case too. They are a European company actually (Dutch originally). So this is a clear cut case of a local competitor being squeezed out of the market by MS spending large amounts of money ensuring there is no market.
- 127 2y agoBoth US and EU blame China of dumping practices, but at the same time Microsoft is doing the exact same thing.
- bearjaws 2y agoAnd in time, GitHub will start charging for private repos again, build minutes will be 40 free per month. Enshittification will follow once they stop getting good training data out of GitHub.
- westurner 2y agoDid they prevent OEMs from tampering with the system install image by adding apps that compete with Teams or from removing Teams? Are they fascistly on notice for market cap, not antitrust offense? Is the remedy that EU dominates MS until their market share is acceptable, or did MS prevent others from installing competing apps on the OS they and others distribute? In the US, no bundling applies to ski resorts working in concert with other ski resorts. Materially, did MS prevent OEMs or users from installing competing apps?
- redleader55 2y agoIt feels like regulators are trying to solve the problem at the wrong end. Whenever you hear about an antitrust ruling, it's "bundling". IE was the same, now this. In my opinion, the problem is when a company is happy to eat the losses for a while, in hopes of killing competition and then raising the price when they are alone in the market. Clouds, ride hailing apps... It's fine to price your product at "zero", as long as you hold that price after you become a monopoly. The problem for regulators is they can't force a price, nor judge on all the externalities that are included in it.
- sylware 2y agoBut the basic digital regulations are still missing: Enforcement of noscript/basic (x)html interop (no massive and grotesquely complex big tech web engines required), minimal file formats (for instance utf8 text), png for images (I have suspicions of unstable complexity with webp). This is not perfect, and sometimes there is kind of nothing: printing oriented file formats is an issue: pdf/ps. PDF was kind of highjacked at ISO by msft putting complexity at its core, even "programming complexity" there. I wonder how complex are PS/PDF(max 1.4 I guess), because you know big tech wants the possibility to code a _real-life_ alternative to be a nightmare.
- Aissen 2y agoMaybe they should address the free cloud credits next, which are a great way to lock you in and kill competition. Just like the bundling of Teams, they might be good for (business) customers in the short term, but will only lead to future monopolies.
- rexreed 2y agoHere's what I don't get. Almost everyone I talk to hates Teams. But they use it anyways. Nothing is stopping them from using Zoom or Google Meet, or some other alternative. Yes, these other alternatives have their own problems and tradeoffs. But Teams is just substantially worse than these alternatives. I'll take a Google Meet meeting any day over Teams crap. Nothing is forcing people to use Teams, but they do. It can't solely be cause it's just bundled and free. People don't want to spend any effort to do better? Is the friction that high?
- biddit 2y ago> Here's what I don't get. Almost everyone I talk to hates Teams. But they use it anyways. Nothing is stopping them from using Zoom or Google Meet, or some other alternative. Maybe in startups and small companies without a dedicated IT team, but an enterprise IT group will absolutely stop you. And Teams is very easy for them to administrate if they are already deploying MS products.
- aphit 2y agoI must be in the minority. In the early days Teams had some pitfalls but for the most part, it's rather great. I don't understand what all the fuss is. I regularly use both Teams and Google meet and don't find any significant differences that matter... so at the end of the day, use the one that is bundled with the rest of your software instead of having a different dependency.
- rexreed 2y agoYou are in the minority. Out of 392 people in our internal CoP group that uses Teams on a weekly basis for our checkin, in a poll, 276 asked to switch off Teams to something else, and only 5 people wanted to remain. My guess is that you'd be one of those 5. Sadly in this IT ecosystem, the minority rules.
- leokennis 2y agoThe elephant in the room here is companies who "do their chat and collaboration" on Teams. If you work in an organization with 10,000 people using Teams, no one is going to join your Google Meet meeting - if you're even allowed to create one. As someone who uses Teams all day for work, I have to say since they created the "New Teams", the performance is a lot better and especially if you also use OneDrive, Outlook etc. it is a very streamlined and handy tool.
- kats 2y agoIf Teams and Outlook become clunkier because of the EU, that will be a really irritating problem...
- bartekpacia 2y agoI don’t think it’s possible for them to be even clunkier. The only next step is they just stop working at all.