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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

#111

Post by xnorswap »

Neil44 wrote: post #26

They don't just bundle it, they make it auto-start on screen on Windows machines whether you've got an account or not.

It auto-runs all the time.

I've got a work laptop with a teams for the work domain which I want.

There's also a completely different copy of teams, "Microsoft teams (Personal)" teams, which I have to close.

Not just every boot, even after I close it manually, I still find it running constantly.

I've no idea what triggers it, but it doesn't seem to obey any startup settings.

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

#112

Post by Vespasian »

flavius29663 wrote: post #33

I 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.

Google 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.

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

#113

Post by phito »

jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #51
Neil44 wrote: post #26

They don't just bundle it, they make it auto-start on screen on Windows machines whether you've got an account or not.

In Windows you can use the task manager to configure what programs are started with your computer.

Why do Windows users try so hard to keep defending their OS's shitty behaviors? It's always "you can disable it" (but it might come back automatically after an update), and when you can't disable it (one drive), it's "just don't use it".

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

#114

Post by sham1 »

okasaki wrote: post #88
vincnetas wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You suggest that US government would go to war against its main allies to protect business interests of a software company?

War? 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.

> 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.

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

#116

Post by phito »

BigJono wrote: post #100
barryrandall wrote: post #93

Oh 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.

What 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

My god yes. It's so, so bad...

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

#117

Post by Neil44 »

xnorswap wrote: post #111
Neil44 wrote: post #26

They don't just bundle it, they make it auto-start on screen on Windows machines whether you've got an account or not.

It auto-runs all the time. I've got a work laptop with a teams for the work domain which I want. There's also a completely different copy of teams, "Microsoft teams (Personal)" teams, which I have to close. Not just every boot, even after I close it manually, I still find it running constantly. I've no idea what triggers it, but it doesn't seem to obey any startup settings.

Ha, that's another thing that grinds my gears. Teams, Teams (Personal) Teams (new)... WTF people you're supposed to know what you're doing here.

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

#118

Post by bloopernova »

barryrandall wrote: post #93

Oh 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.

The most beautiful words I've read today.

Can everyone please use Mattermost, Slack, or Matrix chat?

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

#119

Post by probably_wrong »

worksonmine wrote: post #54

I hate on Microsoft every chance I get, but how is this situation different than Google bundling Meet on Android? Should Google be worried?

The issue is not that "Microsoft bundled Teams" but rather that Microsoft came to companies like mine at the time and essentially said "We are deprecating Skype and we are offering this resource-hungry, bug-ridden program called Teams as only replacement. You don't have to use it, but we'll bill you for it anyway".

They knew full well that the average IT department would not approve paying for a second tool and offered no "discount" if you didn't want to use it. It was take it or take it.

My only complaint is that this didn't happen sooner, but I'll cut them some slack for not taking swift action during the notably-unremarkable year 2020.

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

#120

Post by crazygringo »

kogir wrote: post #92
gambiting wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is getting a competitive advantage by bundling curl, which is the entire point of this argument.

wget begs to differ. Kidding aside, where exactly does it end? How do you consider when you’ve hit “too much” and how many pieces must be split out when you do? Should every product in the Office suite be offered only individually?

Indeed, a lot of people don't remember but back when spell checking was a new thing, there was genuine concern over whether bundling it with word processors was anticompetitive.

Or if Word and WordPerfect should be sold without spell checkers, and they'd need to interoperate with third party ones.

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