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Microsoft breached antitrust rules by bundling Teams and Office, EU says

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Re: Microsoft breached antitrust rules by bundling Teams and Office, EU says

#11

Post by rlpb »

_heimdall wrote: post #4

Why 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.

A friend told me about how his workplace have switched from Zoom to Teams for video calls because they use Office and Teams is now bundled with Office so they don't have to pay extra for Zoom.

> This sure seems to say it's illegal to bundle any products together if a competitor for one of the products complains about it.

It's not bundling itself that's the issue. The use of one market to encroach on another is what's considered unfair competition. The fact that a competitor exists that just does one part of it is what makes the case that the two markets are separate.

Re: Microsoft breached antitrust rules by bundling Teams and Office, EU says

#12

Post by _heimdall »

gklitz wrote: post #9
_heimdall wrote: post #4

Why 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.

Don’t know what’s hard to understand there? Microsoft didn’t have a chat product (worth anything, Skype was a mountain of crap). Slack comes along and builds a great product, Microsoft goes “oh, the office suite now includes teams!” So everyone gets it “for free” if they have the office suite, murdering slack in the market. And of cause everyone will have to pay for Teams as the price of the office package rises to I…

So the legal line is that once a company is successful in bundling and selling products the bundle is locked and can never be added to? That seems unreasonable to me, and I generally am pretty hard on monopolistic issues.

Edit: wouldn't this mean that Apple could never have added a preinstalled app to the iPhone after the phones became successful?

Re: Microsoft breached antitrust rules by bundling Teams and Office, EU says

#13

Post by paulryanrogers »

_heimdall wrote: post #12
gklitz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t know what’s hard to understand there? Microsoft didn’t have a chat product (worth anything, Skype was a mountain of crap). Slack comes along and builds a great product, Microsoft goes “oh, the office suite now includes teams!” So everyone gets it “for free” if they have the office suite, murdering slack in the market. And of cause everyone will have to pay for Teams as the price of the office package rises to I…

So the legal line is that once a company is successful in bundling and selling products the bundle is locked and can never be added to? That seems unreasonable to me, and I generally am pretty hard on monopolistic issues. Edit: wouldn't this mean that Apple could never have added a preinstalled app to the iPhone after the phones became successful?

If success is near total domination then yes?

Re: Microsoft breached antitrust rules by bundling Teams and Office, EU says

#14

Post by _heimdall »

rlpb wrote: post #11
_heimdall wrote: post #4

Why 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.

A friend told me about how his workplace have switched from Zoom to Teams for video calls because they use Office and Teams is now bundled with Office so they don't have to pay extra for Zoom. > This sure seems to say it's illegal to bundle any products together if a competitor for one of the products complains about it. It's not bundling itself that's the issue. The use of one market to encroach on another is what's…

Once car manufacturers started including bluetooth support they were incroaching on the aftermarket headunit market in a similar way. Was that actually illegal?

Re: Microsoft breached antitrust rules by bundling Teams and Office, EU says

#15

Post by rlpb »

_heimdall wrote: post #14
rlpb wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend told me about how his workplace have switched from Zoom to Teams for video calls because they use Office and Teams is now bundled with Office so they don't have to pay extra for Zoom. > This sure seems to say it's illegal to bundle any products together if a competitor for one of the products complains about it. It's not bundling itself that's the issue. The use of one market to encroach on another is what's…

Once car manufacturers started including bluetooth support they were incroaching on the aftermarket headunit market in a similar way. Was that actually illegal?

This is far from a novel question. There is extensive statute and case law in this area across many jurisdictions. You could start at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_law

Re: Microsoft breached antitrust rules by bundling Teams and Office, EU says

#16

Post by chucke1992 »

gklitz wrote: post #9
_heimdall wrote: post #4

Why 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.

Don’t know what’s hard to understand there? Microsoft didn’t have a chat product (worth anything, Skype was a mountain of crap). Slack comes along and builds a great product, Microsoft goes “oh, the office suite now includes teams!” So everyone gets it “for free” if they have the office suite, murdering slack in the market. And of cause everyone will have to pay for Teams as the price of the office package rises to I…

slack murdered itself from the market by not delivering good video conferencing solution. Zoom succeeded immensely and it was not bundled with any office suite.

And the hilarious part is that Slack is still crap in regards of video calls.

Re: Microsoft breached antitrust rules by bundling Teams and Office, EU says

#17

Post by _heimdall »

rlpb wrote: post #15
_heimdall wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once car manufacturers started including bluetooth support they were incroaching on the aftermarket headunit market in a similar way. Was that actually illegal?

This is far from a novel question. There is extensive statute and case law in this area across many jurisdictions. You could start at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_law

Sure, I'm well aware of antitrust laws, the Sherman Act, etc. If you want to look at it from that angle, what are the consumer concerns being violates by Teams being bundled and potentially replacing Zoom that was previously used? Teams isn't forced on Office users and Zoom isn't prevented, consumers still can choose.

Re: Microsoft breached antitrust rules by bundling Teams and Office, EU says

#18

Post by 255kb »

_heimdall wrote: post #4

Why 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.

Law is not working like that. We are talking about antitrust laws which have specific criterias to evaluate if a company is dominant on a market and is abusing this position or not. All these criterias must be evaluated for each case.

There are many steps involved: - identifying the relevant markets, probably something like office applications market and chat applications market. - whether the company has a dominant position on one (likely MS being dominant on the office apps market) - checking if a specific action could be considered as a abuse of dominant position, restricting the competition. Here it would be MS bundling the app, giving them an unfair advantage on the chat apps market.

They would likely be to assess the real damages to the market, whether or not competitors were able to do business or not, etc.

It's not all black or white, like any legal subject.

Re: Microsoft breached antitrust rules by bundling Teams and Office, EU says

#19

Post by snowpid »

_heimdall wrote: post #8
snowpid wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

does this concern your everyday life?

Blurry lines and gray areas in law? Absolutely, I'd rather not accidentally break a law that is only defined after the fact in court.

No do you have real problems with blurry laws in your country? (If so is this country in the EU?)

Re: Microsoft breached antitrust rules by bundling Teams and Office, EU says

#20

Post by anon373839 »

_heimdall wrote: post #6
kevsamuel wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legality is not science, most of the time, the definition of what's wrong is blurry and humans have to debate about it.

Laws 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?

You’re going to be very unhappy when you learn what common law is. The law that decides a case is written after the fact. (Yes, retroactively!)
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