3 ms·

Why is excel and word any more connected than teams and excel or teams and word? Or even outlook? If outlook can be grouped with “office suite”, and EU didn’t

Why is excel and word any more connected than teams and excel or teams and word? Or even outlook? If outlook can be grouped with “office suite”, and EU didn’t have a problem with that, why not Teams? It is also for communicating with people.

gostsamo 2y ago
Because word and excel go together in the needs of a business and those who usually buy one use the other as well. All competition of MS in this space offer similar products bundled in a similar way. Teams is a recent addition which is orthogonal and is a product from entirely another market where the competition has offerings without an office suite. Looking from there, MS uses unrelated offering to hide the price of their product while pushing it to hundreds of millions who are already their clients.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  I disagree. Excel is probably far more used than Word, and word could be dropped from many people’s computers and no one would notice. Outlook is probably the most widely used, and again, if outlook can be considered part of the office suite, which it has been for decades, why not another communication software? My broader point being these groupings are all pretty arbitrary.
  - EasyMark 2y ago
    Wouldn’t it be that we have a fairly widely spread defecto definition of “office suite” as word processor, spread sheet, presentation, email as it’s been that way for decades? Not sure about “communications”however I think it is a serious argument to consider that a separate product, but not the others, they’re kind of like peanut butter and jelly or Bonnie & Clyde or the three stooges.
    - lotsofpulp 2y ago
      I think that is a very un-serious argument with no consistency. Microsoft has always sold a cheaper "office suite" without outlook. What businesses have historically bundled and not bundled is irrelevant to what is best for society going forward. Surely there were many features that many software businesses add that weren't there before. What if Microsoft relabeled Teams to be part of Outlook? Like they made Calendars part of Outlook. It all feels like starting at the result and working backwards towards a justification.
      - stoperaticless 2y ago
        Tradition is more serious than you think. Being around for a long time is a quality of its own. It strongly implies familiarity and good enough fit for everybody. (Traditions compete in a sense, some do not survive)
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
Modified3019 2y ago
Yeah, I’m all for monopoly busting, but I don’t understand what kind of criteria are in use here. I’ve yet to see a definition that would allow me to apply rules in a coherent way. My own company uses office 365, and of all the included programs, I basically only use excel, outlook, and teams. I haven’t even opened word in years, all documents are shared as PDFs. As such, word has no more inherent need for “bundling” than teams. It just seems arbitrary. I’d be more comfortable just stating that companies over a certain size can’t bundle at all.
- OJFord 2y ago
  There do exist companies trying to compete on chat and complaining about it, I'd guess. (Whereas Gmail is doing fine and Thunderbird is free.)
  - dantheman 2y ago
    That is the essence of anti-trust, it's nonsense. It's merely losers complaining.
    - necovek 2y ago
      It's not that simple. Imagine you build the next great thing, you open up a new product line for everyone. Your business starts doing well, but then Microsoft or Apple come along, throw money at it and include it in their bundles (Office or OS) by default. Suddenly, you are the loser, while they are selling below investment cost to simply push you out of the market. So that's the issue. Similarly, it should probably be made illegal for VC-backed startups to undercut incumbents just to shut them down: that's very similar to me.
tick_tock_tick 2y ago
The EU's economic recovery isn't looking too good so it's time for them to dip into their war chest (USA tech companies).
burnerthrow008 2y ago
> Why is excel and word any more connected than teams and excel or teams and word? Or even outlook? If outlook can be grouped with “office suite”, and EU didn’t have a problem with that, why not Teams? It's not. The argument you're replying to is remarkably similar to the ones in the EU+Apple threads: Why should iOS be considered a "general purpose" OS? Because people consider it as such. Why isn't Xbox or Switch a "general purpose" computer? Because people don't consider it as such. The whole thing boils down to circular logic of "it is a general purpose computer because it is". The same thing is happening here: Why is it ok to bundle Word and Excel, but not Word and Teams? Because people consider the first one ok, but not the second. Ok, but WHY?!? It's like arguing with a religious fanatic. You are wrong to assume there is any logic behind it. If you really dig into why Microsoft and Apple, and why not Spotify and SAP, the only real answer is: because the EC defined the boundaries of the DMA to include the types of businesses that are run from America and exclude the types of businesses that are run from European. When you finally back them into a corner, the defenders of the DMA fall back to "well $AMERICAN_COMPANY is a gatekeeper, but $EURO_COMPANY is not a gatekeeper". Spotify and SAP easily meet the quantitative thresholds that catch MS, Facebook and Apple, but the EC carefully defined that a "gatekeeper" belongs to certain categories of businesses (operating system, social media, etc.) and does not belong to certain other categories (music streaming, business software) so that it does not catch them. And as we saw with iPadOS, the quantitative thresholds don't even matter if the EC feels like ignoring them.
- snowpid 2y ago
  The gatekeeper criteria are open. Could you precise mention which criteria is bad instead of making strong assumptions? I don't see why Spotify is a gate keeper. You have e.g. Deezer or Apple Music and you can switch very easily.
  - mike_hearn 2y ago
    Spotify is the "gatekeeper" standing between listeners and musicians, like how OS vendors are "gatekeepers" standing between users and developers.

gostsamo 2y ago

Because word and excel go together in the needs of a business and those who usually buy one use the other as well. All competition of MS in this space offer similar products bundled in a similar way. Teams is a recent addition which is orthogonal and is a product from entirely another market where the competition has offerings without an office suite. Looking from there, MS uses unrelated offering to hide the price of their product while pushing it to hundreds of millions who are already their clients.

lotsofpulp 2y ago
I disagree. Excel is probably far more used than Word, and word could be dropped from many people’s computers and no one would notice. Outlook is probably the most widely used, and again, if outlook can be considered part of the office suite, which it has been for decades, why not another communication software? My broader point being these groupings are all pretty arbitrary.
- EasyMark 2y ago
  Wouldn’t it be that we have a fairly widely spread defecto definition of “office suite” as word processor, spread sheet, presentation, email as it’s been that way for decades? Not sure about “communications”however I think it is a serious argument to consider that a separate product, but not the others, they’re kind of like peanut butter and jelly or Bonnie & Clyde or the three stooges.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    I think that is a very un-serious argument with no consistency. Microsoft has always sold a cheaper "office suite" without outlook. What businesses have historically bundled and not bundled is irrelevant to what is best for society going forward. Surely there were many features that many software businesses add that weren't there before. What if Microsoft relabeled Teams to be part of Outlook? Like they made Calendars part of Outlook. It all feels like starting at the result and working backwards towards a justification.
    - stoperaticless 2y ago
      Tradition is more serious than you think. Being around for a long time is a quality of its own. It strongly implies familiarity and good enough fit for everybody. (Traditions compete in a sense, some do not survive)
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]

Modified3019 2y ago

Yeah, I’m all for monopoly busting, but I don’t understand what kind of criteria are in use here. I’ve yet to see a definition that would allow me to apply rules in a coherent way. My own company uses office 365, and of all the included programs, I basically only use excel, outlook, and teams. I haven’t even opened word in years, all documents are shared as PDFs. As such, word has no more inherent need for “bundling” than teams. It just seems arbitrary. I’d be more comfortable just stating that companies over a certain size can’t bundle at all.

OJFord 2y ago
There do exist companies trying to compete on chat and complaining about it, I'd guess. (Whereas Gmail is doing fine and Thunderbird is free.)
- dantheman 2y ago
  That is the essence of anti-trust, it's nonsense. It's merely losers complaining.
  - necovek 2y ago
    It's not that simple. Imagine you build the next great thing, you open up a new product line for everyone. Your business starts doing well, but then Microsoft or Apple come along, throw money at it and include it in their bundles (Office or OS) by default. Suddenly, you are the loser, while they are selling below investment cost to simply push you out of the market. So that's the issue. Similarly, it should probably be made illegal for VC-backed startups to undercut incumbents just to shut them down: that's very similar to me.

tick_tock_tick 2y ago

The EU's economic recovery isn't looking too good so it's time for them to dip into their war chest (USA tech companies).

burnerthrow008 2y ago

> Why is excel and word any more connected than teams and excel or teams and word? Or even outlook? If outlook can be grouped with “office suite”, and EU didn’t have a problem with that, why not Teams? It's not. The argument you're replying to is remarkably similar to the ones in the EU+Apple threads: Why should iOS be considered a "general purpose" OS? Because people consider it as such. Why isn't Xbox or Switch a "general purpose" computer? Because people don't consider it as such. The whole thing boils down to circular logic of "it is a general purpose computer because it is". The same thing is happening here: Why is it ok to bundle Word and Excel, but not Word and Teams? Because people consider the first one ok, but not the second. Ok, but WHY?!? It's like arguing with a religious fanatic. You are wrong to assume there is any logic behind it. If you really dig into why Microsoft and Apple, and why not Spotify and SAP, the only real answer is: because the EC defined the boundaries of the DMA to include the types of businesses that are run from America and exclude the types of businesses that are run from European. When you finally back them into a corner, the defenders of the DMA fall back to "well $AMERICAN_COMPANY is a gatekeeper, but $EURO_COMPANY is not a gatekeeper". Spotify and SAP easily meet the quantitative thresholds that catch MS, Facebook and Apple, but the EC carefully defined that a "gatekeeper" belongs to certain categories of businesses (operating system, social media, etc.) and does not belong to certain other categories (music streaming, business software) so that it does not catch them. And as we saw with iPadOS, the quantitative thresholds don't even matter if the EC feels like ignoring them.

snowpid 2y ago
The gatekeeper criteria are open. Could you precise mention which criteria is bad instead of making strong assumptions? I don't see why Spotify is a gate keeper. You have e.g. Deezer or Apple Music and you can switch very easily.
- mike_hearn 2y ago
  Spotify is the "gatekeeper" standing between listeners and musicians, like how OS vendors are "gatekeepers" standing between users and developers.