Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

apnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 808 posts

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

#281

Post by adam_arthur »

Government should just require open communication protocols/file formats, if a competitor is willing to host the same data at cost.

Client applications should compete on their individual merits, not coast on protocol lock-in.

Would WhatsApp or YouTube have as many users if others could build clients for the same data? (PII etc notwithstanding)

Protocols compete on the merits of the protocol, clients compete on the merits of the client.

I think this will be the reality/obvious a few decades down the line.

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

#282

Post by joe_the_user »

paweladamczuk wrote: post #266

Maybe a push to eliminate proprietary operating systems and file formats from government-supported processes would be more effective? It could be legislative but it could also mean governments supporting FOSS development more. Maybe it's wishful thinking, but this just seems to me like treating the symptoms instead of the root cause.

"More effective" at what?

The state using FOSS is great but that seems quite orthogonal to preventing monopoly abuse by proprietary software vendors. We can do both.

Edit: I think you may be implying that having a variety of choices available would sufficient to prevent monopolies. That's not true as long as you have multiple companies able to cooperate in doing things like bundling, etc.

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

#283

Post by sunaookami »

EasyMark wrote: post #250
sunaookami wrote: post #73

I already know how this will be solved: Microsoft will pay a (small) fine and file it under "the cost of doing business" while the damage is already done. Teams is one of the absolutely worst products ever programmed, it's hiliarious how bad it is. It only reached its market share because Microsoft gave it away "for free" with Office 365 or MS 365 or whatever it's called now.

Don’t these “actions”usually include separating the products out the way the EU wants them?aka don’t include Teams in EU installs of MS office or don’t even include office at all? Otherwise a fine is useless.

Doesn't matter if everyone already uses Teams and the damage is done. Look at Netscape vs IE.

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

#284

Post by ThalesX »

Teever wrote: post #215
ThalesX wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about my startup nextercloud? Why am I being discriminated against!?

Be sure the goal isn't to get every alternative there, just enough to stop the unfair advantage of bundling and to make a healthier market.

Well, I feel like Nextercould™ is the key to a healthier market and stopping the unfair bundling of Nextcloud with major OS releases.

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

#285

Post by palata »

throwAGIway wrote: post #259
pndy wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Endusers should have a total control over what is getting installed on their machines - just like we used to not so long ago or how some Linux distros allows you to select additional software. Each operating system coming from the biggest corporations should offer two paths: express/recommended setup and a fully customizable one for advanced users.

What if I want to buy a fully integrated, fully bundled install-and-forget OS? If the EU makes Apple unbundle all the good stuff from macOS I'll finally move to the US.

The EU wants to give you the choice. You will have the choice to use everything Apple makes.

The only reason to move to the US would be because you really don't want to have a choice, but that would be weird.

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

#286

Post by practicemaths »

paweladamczuk wrote: post #266

Maybe a push to eliminate proprietary operating systems and file formats from government-supported processes would be more effective? It could be legislative but it could also mean governments supporting FOSS development more. Maybe it's wishful thinking, but this just seems to me like treating the symptoms instead of the root cause.

I think the EU can & may be doing both.

AFIK, at least a few countries & research entities over there are using FOSS, at least in part, as well as promoting it.

Hypothetically just because a Government is using FOSS to operate does not mean a company can not still break antitrust rules.

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

#287

Post by stefan_ »

ssahoo wrote: post #63

Why don't they apply the laws universally and effectively make this kind of bundling illegal for mega corporations? For endusers, it feels like they are playing with different rules for Microsoft Apple Adobe and Google. Since EU waits until the damage is done and milks them, it barely helps the situation for consumers. For corps they just assume the penalty as cost of doing business.

Well the logical conclusion of that is to break up the businesses. No other remedy or it's just going to happen again and again, in subtle and not so subtle ways (bundling Teams for free was so absurdly obviously anti-competitive no one has even doubted that in this thread so far..)

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

#288

Post by schrodinger »

FredPret wrote: post #149
queuebert wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the same problem on my Mac since installing Teams. Now Microsoft Update Manager starts every time I boot, even though it's not listed in the boot items. And it always shows that I have an update available ... to Microsoft Update Manager. It's a software ouroboros.

I had the same thing. I forget the exact course of action, but from what I remember: - ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.microsoft.update.agent.plist - ~/Library/Application\ Support/Microsoft\ AU\ Daemon/ - /Library/Application\ Support/Microsoft/MAU2.0/Microsoft\ AutoUpdate.app Nuke all of that, though for the last one you may have to chmod 000 it. Then do a search for everything with Microsoft Update in it and delete tha…

In case this is new to some people: you can run

     $ mdfind [thing]
like

     $ mdfind microsoft
from the command line and it was an ultra-fast search using the index that Spotlight search uses. It's great to find pesky files when trying to rid yourself of an app and can't figure out what's left.

I usually pipe it into a text editor (mdfind 1password | subl), use my editor to put rm or so rm at the beginning of each one, then paste it into terminal to run. That lets me audit the files first as opposed to xargs but I'm sure there's a million ways—the point is mdfind can be useful.

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

#289

Post by TheCycoONE »

Why are the tying laws not enforced in the US, or Canada, or the many other jurisdictions where it's illegal for a monopoly to tie products together; and why does it not apply to the tying of Word and Excel or other apps in the Office suite that use to be sold independently and complete with independent products (Lotus 123, Wordperfect)

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

#290

Post by lotsofpulp »

EasyMark wrote: post #248
lotsofpulp wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Excel is probably far more used than Word, and word could be dropped from many people’s computers and no one would notice. Outlook is probably the most widely used, and again, if outlook can be considered part of the office suite, which it has been for decades, why not another communication software? My broader point being these groupings are all pretty arbitrary.

Wouldn’t it be that we have a fairly widely spread defecto definition of “office suite” as word processor, spread sheet, presentation, email as it’s been that way for decades? Not sure about “communications”however I think it is a serious argument to consider that a separate product, but not the others, they’re kind of like peanut butter and jelly or Bonnie & Clyde or the three stooges.

I think that is a very un-serious argument with no consistency.

Microsoft has always sold a cheaper "office suite" without outlook. What businesses have historically bundled and not bundled is irrelevant to what is best for society going forward.

Surely there were many features that many software businesses add that weren't there before. What if Microsoft relabeled Teams to be part of Outlook? Like they made Calendars part of Outlook. It all feels like starting at the result and working backwards towards a justification.

Post reply on HN