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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

#141

Post by impendia »

_cenw wrote: post #36
skrause wrote: post #28

My employer is a prime example for this case: We use Microsoft 365 because we need Microsoft Office and use their email hosting. And then we use Teams simply because it's already included in the package anyway, even though many employees hate it, but it's hard to argue for another solution because why pay for Slack when we already have Teams "for free"? And since Teams doesn't really need to compete on functionality…

Saw the same pattern with 3 employers over the past 5 years. One killed Slack and all institutional knowledge in its search engine within a month. One replaced all remaining Intel Macs (not an insignificant amount) because Teams would being them to a standstill. The last one is currently happening and I'm wondering what unexpected cost will come to haunt this decision this time. Though one thing that always suffers i…

> Teams feels like it is imposing a culture that seems antithetical to most of the organisations

My employer, a large university, has moved to Microsoft, and I've definitely noticed this in MS's software. It feels like the software is designed with certain office culture and workflow patterns in mind.

For example, previously I was able to use standalone email software. Outlook, in contrast, pushes its calendaring features, which are not something I care to use. I've gotten an increasing number of meeting invitations through this calendar, and Outlook "helpfully" tells me whether I'm available or not. I'm in fact always "available", because I don't use Outlook to manage my schedule.

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

#142

Post by 666satanhimself »

Shrezzing wrote: post #57
_cenw wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saw the same pattern with 3 employers over the past 5 years. One killed Slack and all institutional knowledge in its search engine within a month. One replaced all remaining Intel Macs (not an insignificant amount) because Teams would being them to a standstill. The last one is currently happening and I'm wondering what unexpected cost will come to haunt this decision this time. Though one thing that always suffers i…

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…

[dead]

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

#143

Post by eddieroger »

manuelabeledo wrote: post #136
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…

I didn’t use Lync back in the day, but I used Skype. Skype didn’t have half of the functionality Teams provides. Teams, like Slack, aims at bundling the whole workplace experience in a single app, with actual groups and bidirectional integrations. And of course, Teams defaults to Microsoft products for every single integration that can communicate with one. I would say that regulators didn’t care enough, or were awar…

> Skype didn’t have half of the functionality Teams provides

If one uses Teams, one would definitely see the edges of where Microsoft just started bolting things on to compete with other platforms. Skype was much closer to AIM with a phone bolted on than Teams. Like, why are there two different paradigms for text communication in Teams? A Teams team is a threading conversation, but there is also unthreaded chat? Teams definitely smells of Microsoft trying to compete where it can.

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

#144

Post by EGreg »

Arathorn wrote: post #132
EGreg wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Why don't you mean Matrix? This is precisely what Element is, built on Matrix: https://element.io

Is it a good replacement for Teams?

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

#145

Post by TeMPOraL »

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…

Reading the article, I feel this is just a corporate equivalent of a kid complaining to the teacher that the other kid is making the sportsball game hard for them. Or a kid whining about their elder sibling to their parents - "No fair! I had this idea first! My idea my idea my idea! Mom, dad, do something!".

Parents will discretely roll their eyes, make a small show of telling the elder kid to behave, so that elder kid behaves and younger kid shuts up, and then they'll go back to the kitchen and try to finish eating their sandwiches before either of the kids lodges another complaint against the other, which would be the sixth one this evening.

In short: nothing to see here, just regular motions of the entrepreneurial game.

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

#146

Post by indymike »

BarryMilo wrote: post #133
draugadrotten wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Teams made me realize no one cares about security until it's too late.

> Teams made me realize no one cares about security until it's too late.

Crisis driven decision making is one of the most popular management methods in history.

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

#147

Post by reaperducer »

impendia wrote: post #141
_cenw wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saw the same pattern with 3 employers over the past 5 years. One killed Slack and all institutional knowledge in its search engine within a month. One replaced all remaining Intel Macs (not an insignificant amount) because Teams would being them to a standstill. The last one is currently happening and I'm wondering what unexpected cost will come to haunt this decision this time. Though one thing that always suffers i…

> Teams feels like it is imposing a culture that seems antithetical to most of the organisations My employer, a large university, has moved to Microsoft, and I've definitely noticed this in MS's software. It feels like the software is designed with certain office culture and workflow patterns in mind. For example, previously I was able to use standalone email software. Outlook, in contrast, pushes its calendaring fea…

Outlook, in contrast, pushes its calendaring features

I've never understood Outlook being both email and calendar. Does no one at Microsoft ever want to read an email and reference their calendar at the same time, or vice versa?

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

#148

Post by bennyp101 »

542458 wrote: post #140
EGreg wrote: post #128

I don’t get it. What are the worst things about Teams in your experience? It always worked reliably for me when I was on a team.

Search is pretty terrible, which is a big flaw when you’re trying to dig up old info. Splitting chats with people and chats with teams into separate UIs just makes it hard to keep on top of things. Image uploads and embeds work very inconsistently and often break for no apparent reason.

I've noticed that search has got a lot better in the last few months, seems to be pretty quick at digging up stuff from a few years ago.

I'll give you the image uploads/embeds - it really can be pot luck if it works or not

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

#149

Post by BenFranklin100 »

skrause wrote: post #28

My employer is a prime example for this case: We use Microsoft 365 because we need Microsoft Office and use their email hosting. And then we use Teams simply because it's already included in the package anyway, even though many employees hate it, but it's hard to argue for another solution because why pay for Slack when we already have Teams "for free"? And since Teams doesn't really need to compete on functionality…

Teams main feature is that it is a front end to SharePoint. Not chat. Not video. Even before the pandemic we were using Teams for project management (via the OneNote integration) and file sharing. Each team is a full SharePoint group.

Now that we are all back in the office and don’t use video, we are using Teams even more. The chat is a nice function we’ve adopted since the pandemic, but it’s a side offering really. MS 365 is a godsend for many small businesses.

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

#150

Post by metacritic12 »

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…

Honestly I chalk this one up mostly to just international trade mercantilism.

The EU relatively weaker at developing international software, so slapping "antitrust fines" on Microsoft (which probably have nonzero merit) is a good way of "group negotiation" to get a bulk discount on Microsoft (US) products.

The analogy is how the USA is relatively less good at making quality cheese and wine compared to the EU, so the USA allows any sparking wine to be labeled "Champagne" and any Emmental-style cheese to be labeled "Swiss".

Trump got many things wrong, but got the trade negotiation right when he slapped back luxury wine tariffs on France in return for France fining US software companies -- bulk discounts in both cases.

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