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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

#191

Post by sqeaky »

mhaberl wrote: post #145
xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #98

I thought this was going to be about bundling Teams in O365 and other biz deals. It's wild to me that Teams is so fucking horrible that many businesses who effectively get it for free as part of other dealings still choose to pay for Slack. Sadly I know of many, many more companies where the offer is indeed too good to refuse, much to the disappointment of their workforce. I was helping out at a place where two emplo…

> It's wild to me that Teams is so fucking horrible that many businesses who effectively get it for free as part of other dealings still choose to pay for Slack. I don't agree. For many years now I use Linux. I pay for Slack because some of my clients use it and it is convenient. For some other clients I need to use Teams. I like Teams better. I never had issues with them. Slack I reinstall every 2-3 months because i…

I want to avoid the ms ecosystem so much that I use teams vs other tools as a litmus test.

If I am not desperate for work I tell contracting firms "no teams meetings" in writing when we setting up new contracts. Often, this is isn't a problem and they setup a zoom, webex, or even a plain phone call. Frequently, they try to setup calls on teams and usually about 15m before I remind them that I won't do teams and either they tell me to install teams and send me a windows download link (which does me no good) or the frantically struggle to do anything else. When I explain that I won't install ms software and I will skip their offer for it their mind is blown and and I refer them back to the email they saw, responded to, and agreed to. Then I avoid working for someone who ignored me and would likely ignore me again over more serious matters.

I should probably have more filters like this but avoiding this and the C# work closet to me has saved me a lot of long term pain.

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

#192

Post by sham1 »

snowpid wrote: post #166
sham1 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 su…

"Current lead suspect is Ukraine" Current lead suspect is Russia. Don't repeate Russian propaganda.

True. Mr. Vladimirovich doesn't want for any regime change that could just go back to selling natgas. I personally don't think it was UA either, although unlike so many other Kremlin claims, this would at least be a bit believable because there would be a motive.

But given that the pipe was already closed when it blew up, it most likely was FSB trying to frame Western powers and/or UA. Wouldn't be the first time FSB blows up Russian stuff to blame others.

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

#193

Post by neonsunset »

sqeaky wrote: post #191
mhaberl wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's wild to me that Teams is so fucking horrible that many businesses who effectively get it for free as part of other dealings still choose to pay for Slack. I don't agree. For many years now I use Linux. I pay for Slack because some of my clients use it and it is convenient. For some other clients I need to use Teams. I like Teams better. I never had issues with them. Slack I reinstall every 2-3 months because i…

I want to avoid the ms ecosystem so much that I use teams vs other tools as a litmus test. If I am not desperate for work I tell contracting firms "no teams meetings" in writing when we setting up new contracts. Often, this is isn't a problem and they setup a zoom, webex, or even a plain phone call. Frequently, they try to setup calls on teams and usually about 15m before I remind them that I won't do teams and eithe…

Avoiding C#? That's quite an unfortunate way of looking at the situation if it leads you to missing out on one of the best programming languages of today.

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

#194

Post by Detrytus »

spiralpolitik wrote: post #177
Detrytus wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the GP, but from the top of my head: - semiconductor manufacturing - Internet and social media, streaming services, etc. - Cryptocurrencies - Smartphones and related app stores - Electric cars - Self-driving cars - AI It certainly feels like all the technological innovation happens in the US, and sometimes in China, but never in Europe.

Some counter points: ARM originated at a European company (Acorn/Olivetti). Bluetooth originated at a European Company (Ericsson) Psion, Nokia, and Ericsson invented what would be considered the basics of the Smartphone (via Symbian, Series 60 etc) Spotify is a Swedish company. Nokia and Ericsson produce a good amount of the telecoms infrastructure equipment. While Europe certainly hasn't had a start-up culture on pa…

Acorn was a British company, not European, and had significant help from Apple since 1980s. Nokia never really had any significant share of smartphone market once it took of. Nokia and Ericsson telecom infrastructure is inferior to Huawei's. I will give you Bluetooth and Spotify, but that's just a drop in a bucket.

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

#195

Post by spiralpolitik »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #184
spiralpolitik wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest I think this would have been a better outcome for Microsoft in the long run.

How long is the long run, because 20+ years later, they seem to be doing better than almost every other business in the world, or at least tied in the top 3.

If you look at the last 25 years Microsoft has ended up with more misses than hits. Azure and xBox are the big hits (both from the Balmer era), but they missed in so many other places (mobile notably). They spent most of the Balmer era looking over the shoulder at the DOJ and missed many opportunities as a result.

The Nadella era has seen a lot acquisitions and investments, and they are milking the Windows/Office cash cow until it falls over, but everything else seems to be moribund. Revenue in every segment of Microsoft apart from Azure has either been flat or in decline for the last decade based on the last chart I saw.

What happens when the Azure cash cow stops growing? I don't see anything in the pipeline that Microsoft has that others also don't have access to.

I think if Microsoft had been split up into 3 companies (OS, software, web properties) then it would have moved them beyond the DOJ era quicker and would have put those 3 companies in a much better position to reap more opportunities from the 2000-2020 boom across a wider space.

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

#196

Post by spiralpolitik »

Detrytus wrote: post #194
spiralpolitik wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some counter points: ARM originated at a European company (Acorn/Olivetti). Bluetooth originated at a European Company (Ericsson) Psion, Nokia, and Ericsson invented what would be considered the basics of the Smartphone (via Symbian, Series 60 etc) Spotify is a Swedish company. Nokia and Ericsson produce a good amount of the telecoms infrastructure equipment. While Europe certainly hasn't had a start-up culture on pa…

Acorn was a British company, not European, and had significant help from Apple since 1980s. Nokia never really had any significant share of smartphone market once it took of. Nokia and Ericsson telecom infrastructure is inferior to Huawei's. I will give you Bluetooth and Spotify, but that's just a drop in a bucket.

Olivetti (an Italian company) took over Acorn in 1985. This was around the time the ARM processor was being developed. Acorn was in danger of going under at this time when one of their creditors bounced.

Apple didn't come along until much later.

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

#197

Post by immibis »

_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?

If you're a big company and the penalty is only a fine... there is not much need to be absolutely sure you don't break the law. It is just another risk, like the risk of a data center catching on fire, that is to be managed, not avoided at all costs. Law for you and me means someone might go to jail and that's worth avoiding all costs, but for a company it just means spending more money or receiving less.

Cases are also more unique. People get murdered "routinely" so everyone has figured out the clear lines. Antitrust doesn't happen as often and each case is unique.

Are you hoping for a world where corporations can find loopholes and it's impossible to punish them for exploiting the loopholes because we can only execute the law strictly like a computer program? Even ethereum smart contracts can be overturned - it happened once.

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

#198

Post by immibis »

_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.

In corporate antitrust law, specifically. Nobody is going to jail over this. They might just have to change the sales terms. Is this so terrible?

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

#199

Post by _heimdall »

davidgerard wrote: post #53
_heimdall wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really strange way to attempt to silence my opinion. Yes I do have issues with blurry laws. My current country is not in the EU, though until recently I was a resident of an EU country also with blurry laws. Am I allowed to have an opinion now?

> This is a really strange way to attempt to silence my opinion. It's that your replies in this thread show a complete lack of understanding and a refusal to take in multiple people patiently explaining to you. Apart from your bizarre posture that calling out your low quality posting constitutes "silencing" you.

The GP comment I was referring to asked where I live with no other context. The implication there is that my having an opinion, or at least sharing it, is somehow gated by whether I'm currently living in the EU.

We may have different interpretations of the law, or different opinions on what we think the laws should be, but that doesn't mean I am bizarrely posturing with no understanding of the law.

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

#200

Post by jacobwilliamroy »

dsalfdslfdsa wrote: post #74
jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Sounds like you don't have much experience with Windows and MS software. https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msteams/forum/all/why-do...

I administer a Windows domain at my job that I do 40 hours a week so your assessment of me is just wrong and also offensive.

I just restarted one of the workstations with Teams startup enabled and Teams ran when the computer restarted. Then I tried disabling Teams startup in the task manager on the same workstation and then restarted the workstation, and Teams hasn't started. I checked the startup tab in the task manager and Teams is still disabled after the restart. It hasn't appeared in the task manager either. This is Windows 10 Pro, so the behavior might be different on different versions/editions of Windows. Also this behavior might be affected by updates. These machines automatically install updates every Saturday, so they're running the latest Windows 10. Even if the setting is reset on a future update, I can create a GPO to disable it or even a scheduled task if I'm not allowed to manage this computer at the domain level.

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