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Microsoft faces antitrust scrutiny from the EU over Teams, Office 365

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Re: Microsoft faces antitrust scrutiny from the EU over Teams, Office 365

#121

Post by ethbr0 »

kwanbix wrote: post #115
ethbr0 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market for Teams isn't personal use: it's enterprise use. In enterprise, managed-device land, options are severely curtailed.

My current company uses Google's Workspace and Google Chat. My previous company used Workspace also, but they used Slack. For my startup, we use Google Workspace, and I would never ever pay the same amount of money I pay for GW to have Slack. The value proposition of Slack is not that valuable to charge what they charge. I would happily pay 1 or 2 euros per month per user, no more. I have never used Teams. Nobody is…

That's good for you, but you are aware there are many, many Microsoft shops? And those people are often forced to use Teams because Microsoft sold to the VP/C*?

Re: Microsoft faces antitrust scrutiny from the EU over Teams, Office 365

#122

Post by worrycue »

majewsky wrote: post #116
worrycue wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in certain very large EU countries their market share is very high And which EU countries are those? I know a few in the 60s% market share range but that would hardly be considered “very high”.

How is being the market leader by a wide margin anything else than "very high market share"?

Market share is market share, it's a percentage of the total market. Low 60s % at best in a few countries isn't very high.

Re: Microsoft faces antitrust scrutiny from the EU over Teams, Office 365

#123

Post by CubsFan1060 »

itsoktocry wrote: post #98
mdasen wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but it's hard to argue for another solution because why pay for Slack when we already have Teams "for free"? I definitely understand this argument and I definitely understand how it plays out in the real world. At the same time, it strikes me as one of the ways companies can be foolishly cheap. If a product like Teams is making employees so unhappy, it's definitely worth spending some money to fix that. I've never us…

> I've never used Teams, but I hear so much complaining about it. People will complain about anything, though. The nature of my work has me dealing with all of these platforms, depending on the clients. Guess what? I don't find Slack to be some joyous piece of software to use. It's better than the alternatives, I guess, but not to the point that I really care one way or the other. Some people complain about the bundl…

For many remote workers, this is the single largest connection they have to their coworkers and work. It is your main communication method you use. I think the argument is that if you define the problem as "all of them let you chat with one another", then they all satisfy it.

But when it's your main communication method, you want people to enjoy it, use it, and want to use it more. You don't want people to avoid communication because they have to use a crappy IM client. These small differences have huge impacts.

I've used all of them in the past, and Teams was, and still is, the one I avoid chatting with someone unless absolutely necessary.

Re: Microsoft faces antitrust scrutiny from the EU over Teams, Office 365

#124

Post by Bootvis »

nineteen999 wrote: post #104
Shrezzing wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Slack really dropped the ball in 2020, and that's ultimately why the inferior Teams and Zoom platforms have been able to solidify their market shares, and Discord was able to bastardise some of Slack's old market share. It took Slack nearly 2 years after the pandemic started to introduce features like Huddles - by which point, everyone who needed video conferencing software (which was basically every white-co…

> By mid-April was in a usable state. Do you mean April 2024 or 2025? Because the Teams I use on a regular daily basis is still unusable garbage. Granted it's better than February 2020, but it's still a train wreck of chats that don't work, calls dropped often, and files that won't attach to messages. Not that I am all that fond of Slack either.

I don’t like Teams either but in my corporate environment it’s mostly without bugs at the moment. They dropped support for disabling incoming video for some unknown reason but that’s my only complaint right now.

Re: Microsoft faces antitrust scrutiny from the EU over Teams, Office 365

#125

Post by qwerty456127 »

nullindividual wrote: post #99
qwerty456127 wrote: post #93

Microsoft should be forced to stop requiring "Microsoft accounts" to activate a box license, let alone binding such licenses to a specific user forever. As a small business you can buy a basic Office box for a new employee and forget about having it back once they leaeve the team. This is bullshit.

A company can reassign licenses as required. Just don’t use consumer accounts.

Firslly a private person should not be forced to have or use an online account either.

Secondly, as a small business, we prefer to just buy box versions (even if they cost more) from the nearest computer store the same way we buy office supplies.

Neither was a problem in the past, everyone could just buy a box, install and reinstall it on any PC.

Now the very meaning of a box version seems destroyed (I don't understand what does it mean anymore).

Meanwhile, there is a EU Court of Justice case saying people can re-sell used software.

Re: Microsoft faces antitrust scrutiny from the EU over Teams, Office 365

#126

Post by EGreg »

draugadrotten wrote: post #88
leokennis wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, Teams integrates with the other MS stuff. If I share files in a channel, in the background it is "just" a SharePoint which in turn I can add to my OneDrive. Meaning I can save a file in Word to that SharePoint and everyone in the channel can access it.

Teams is a security nightmare, and Sharepoint as well. Access permissions are nearly impossible to grasp for normal users. The feature that all files dropped are shared instantly by everyone through sharepoint is a huge security risk. People in general have no understanding that they are sharing files with everyone that can join a Teams channel, meaning that confidential and sensitive information frequently gets adde…

What if there was a free, open source alternative for Teams? I don’t mean Matrix or Mastodon. I mean something you could run on-prem and it would have chats, meetings, attach files etc. Do you know anything like this?

Re: Microsoft faces antitrust scrutiny from the EU over Teams, Office 365

#127

Post by deergomoo »

theonlybutlet wrote: post #34

I can't understand how Apple keeps getting away scot-free, considering this type of scrutiny exists and how their services work.

They’re under fire in the areas where their practices have noticeable consumer impact, namely the App Store, USB vs Lightning, and repairability.

Their services are an afterthought in terms of market share, particularly in Europe. For example no-one really gives a shit about iMessage and “green bubbles” here because most folks are just using WhatsApp.

Re: Microsoft faces antitrust scrutiny from the EU over Teams, Office 365

#129

Post by TeMPOraL »

nineteen999 wrote: post #104
Shrezzing wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Slack really dropped the ball in 2020, and that's ultimately why the inferior Teams and Zoom platforms have been able to solidify their market shares, and Discord was able to bastardise some of Slack's old market share. It took Slack nearly 2 years after the pandemic started to introduce features like Huddles - by which point, everyone who needed video conferencing software (which was basically every white-co…

> By mid-April was in a usable state. Do you mean April 2024 or 2025? Because the Teams I use on a regular daily basis is still unusable garbage. Granted it's better than February 2020, but it's still a train wreck of chats that don't work, calls dropped often, and files that won't attach to messages. Not that I am all that fond of Slack either.

I must be an unique snowflake, because I switched jobs around March 2020, and the new place used Teams exclusively, and... it was good. Not stellar, but good for the standards of software in this decade. Better than Slack, anyway. There were some weird glitches happening couple times a year, but nothing major.

So either I'm incredibly lucky, or - my going hypothesis - Teams actually does work quite well, if you deploy it along with SharePoint, Exchange, and other Microsoft products it integrates with.

Re: Microsoft faces antitrust scrutiny from the EU over Teams, Office 365

#130

Post by 666satanhimself »

llimos wrote: post #118

This is just weird because there has been a chat app as part of Office since 2007 (Office Communicator, then Lync, then Skype for Business, then Teams). That's way before Slack even existed. Is the claim that it's anti-competitive simply because they made their existing chat functionality better ? Or because Slack decided to launch a standalone product? Can I make a standalone Excel competitor and then claim Microsof…

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