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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

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It fucking autoruns by default on my Linux machine and eventually the only way to prevent it from not auto-running is to remove it. I avoid teams now whenever possible and use a browser session if forced to use teams.

For some bizarre reason, Microsoft Teams is the registered file association handler for *HTML* files on my (Linux) machine. I have no idea how on earth that happened, but I do not think I did it.

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

#332

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 me…

> Government should just require open communication protocols/file formats They did, Microsoft made Office support some open XML thing, and what changed?

It's not really open, nor is it really the MS Office documents format.

And yet, a few competing alternatives appeared anyway.

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

#333
Awesome, now do Adobe and Autodesk next. How is Creative Cloud not an anti-competitive bundle under the same description? Why do we ignore the particularly egregious exploiters of customers? Should Apple computers not have messenger built in? Should Google Workspace remove Meet? What are the actual rules because they seem to just apply to whomever the EU wants to shake down any given year.

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

#334

When a company’s initial interview is on Teams I see it as a bad sign. If a company forces you to use Windows for your dev machine it’s a red flag. If a company forces you to use a Citrix instance for your dev machine honestly run away screaming and take your sanity with you.

I've had a few interviews that use Teams, but I've always just used the browser version, and it worked fine on a Mac and Linux last time I tried it.

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

#335
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

I think it's a bit overblown. I don't have OneDrive enabled or Teams on my personal device and it was easy and mostly forgettable. I haven't any issues with it coming back after an update or anything. Edge isn't my default browser either. I feel like people want Windows to be evil so they oversell the issues. That's not to say that Microsoft should be forgiven for their obvious over-promotion of internal products. Th…

> I think it's a bit overblown.

Indeed, they've been playing shenanigans with OneDrive, but you can actually uninstall it now easily. That didn't used to be the case. Yes, it gets re-installed, yes it now is auto-enabling itself, but hey - you can easily remove it now.

I'm pretty sure I solved definitively the Teams autostart problem long ago, easily enough I can't recall what I did. It's not a problem for me, even on 'Home' machines.

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

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I am not an expert on anti trust, but I do see that the EU has missed the boat on every new industry in the 21st century compared to the USA. Are you able to cite any examples of 'missing the boat'?

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.

> Internet and social media, streaming services, etc.

The very WWW originated at CERN in Europe.

> Cryptocurrencies

For all we know Satoshi could've been an European. Same goes for Nicolas van Saberhagen. Vitalik is neither European nor from the US. I'm not an expert, but most of the US cryptocurrency startups I see are cheap pyramid schemes, and no real innovation anymore.

> AI

DeepMind was a British company. It had several successes, and was acquired by Google later, which raises a question what does it mean "innovation happens in the US". In this case innovation happens in UK, but it's owned by a American company.

There's certainly a lot more, but (similarly to you) I don't keep track of nationality of every company I interact with. And the question is pretty fuzzy in case of very international companies.

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

#337
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's as if they saw how badly they messed up the Lync -> "Skype for business" transition and thought, "Yeah let's try that again".

Communicator -> Lync (after the computer system of a dystopian videogame?) -> Skype for Business (because everybody knew Skype, so let's make this completely unrelated thing) -> Teams.

Every step was about as fucked-up as every other.

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

#338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It fucking autoruns by default on my Linux machine and eventually the only way to prevent it from not auto-running is to remove it. I avoid teams now whenever possible and use a browser session if forced to use teams.

Rant on: I use it in-browser on Linux also: Microsoft's security system is horrendous. I have to log into Teams-based client meetings using incognito browser windows because Teams keeps getting into mystery login loops with regular windows. It was working for a while, but I needed to log into Intel for Altera FPGA information. Well Intel uses Microsoft Azure for identity management (I had to log into Microsoft to log into Intel). After I did this, I couldn't attend client meetings anymore. I'm pretty sure the root of the issue is that I have multiple Microsoft identities, and their security model does not handle this case well, or at least it's incomprehensible to me and I don't want to waste any more time on it. Now Microsoft also knows me via github which is screwing it up further. It tries to tie your identity to your phone number, but it will not allow multiple account on a single number. It's a nightmare. Oh yeah, Microsoft also insists on having me install a phone app for identity management, but it doesn't solve any issues (I can't log in) other than wasting my time. This is the only thing I have to use Microsoft for, and the experience sucks. F* Microsoft.

Say what you will about Google, at least I never had these issues.

Edit: I'm not the only who constantly has this issue, see: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams/teams...

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msteams/forum/all/new-te...

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

#340
post #318

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 me…

>Would YouTube have as many users if others could build clients for the same data? Would those YouTube clients offer a subscription service to pay for the data they download, or did you expect Alphabet to cover all the costs?

There are an astounding number of people who never stop for even a second to consider the nuts and bolts implications of the ideas they want to foist onto society.
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