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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

#361

Post by jhallenworld »

isk517 wrote: post #356
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.

Microsoft could easily avoid a lot of legal hassle and earn a lot of goodwill if they just offered a version of Windows with nothing but the most basic stuff pre-installed. Hell, just go the typical/custom install that a most other programs have during the initial start up, most people will just select the option that installs Office and the other crap anyway. The people that don't want it will never use it and curre…

Surely they know all of this and yet have made the decision that they don't care about any goodwill.

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

#362

Post by daniel_iversen »

adam_arthur wrote: post #281

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…

As much as I think big tech sometimes abuses their power and leverage unfair advantages we shouldn’t stifle innovation by requiring everything to be totally open from the get go. If there’s zero switching costs to go to a competitor then what’s the incentives for companies to spent a lot of money and time building a product? It’d be very risky (especially for small players actually) and they’ll have to do “safe” incremental functionality until they have a larger user base and can afford to invest in R&D because it’s less likely many of their users will leave all at once. It’s the same reason why we have patents for things - to incentivise the investment in R&D. Maybe there could be a threshold for time+revenue+users that trigger the need for openness? Same should be true for social networks and when we can/should set a higher bar for holding them responsible for abuse on their platform I feel.

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

#363

Post by bryanrasmussen »

appstorelottery wrote: post #352
adam_arthur wrote: post #281

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…

Communication protocols and file formats IMHO.

but.. file systems

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

#364

Post by 9dev »

adam_arthur wrote: post #325
jad wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies can iterate on their products much faster if they're not required to publish all of their functionality as public APIs. Once the APIs have been published, it's much harder for them to be changed. Doing this also puts them at the mercy of whether or not client applications are willing to support their new functionality. Maybe YouTube wants clients to adopt some feature, but a powerful client application does…

The company doesn't need to expose custom APIs on their data. If they implement a chat protocol, they must allow other clients to interface with it. For the data side, likely any requirements wouldn't go into effect until a dataset is deemed sufficiently large/societally important, and there could be a period of exclusivity similarly to the patent system to encourage innovation. This system works very well for new dr…

> The company doesn't need to expose custom APIs on their data. If they implement a chat protocol, they must allow other clients to interface with it.

And how would that work without a way to talk to the company’s chat server, and document the way to do that, and commit to keeping that way of communicating reasonably stable? In other words, an API?

Which implies sort of a commitment to the way that chat protocol works, maybe even before the company knows how that looks like. Modern development methodology, that is, working in sprints and iterating towards a local maximum, doesn’t really go well with an API that’s required to work pretty much stable from day one. So when would the point in time be where you’d be required to open up to other clients?

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

#365

Post by petepete »

WheatMillington wrote: post #300
gabeio wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While they offer it they don’t hand it to you for free just because you bought their iCloud storage. The issue here seems to be aimed squarely at slack and the like which have been in-theory pushed out of the market by teams. Of course most of us know that’s unfortunate because if they actually used teams for a little they wouldn’t use it even if it was bundled (probably why MS is trying to stick it everywhere).

I don't understand how bundling Teams has pushed competitors out of the market. If anything it should make competitors more appealing, as they don't require the bundled MS software?

I think it's more a case of "well we already have Teams why do you need Slack?"

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

#367

Post by pyeri »

jodrellblank wrote: post #306
adam_arthur wrote: post #281

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?

We did get Libre office and Apache OpenOffice due to that? I think they both should become obsolete in an ideal world where folks converse in fluent markdown to achieve everything they want in a document.

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

#368

Post by cafed00d »

isk517 wrote: post #356
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.

Microsoft could easily avoid a lot of legal hassle and earn a lot of goodwill if they just offered a version of Windows with nothing but the most basic stuff pre-installed. Hell, just go the typical/custom install that a most other programs have during the initial start up, most people will just select the option that installs Office and the other crap anyway. The people that don't want it will never use it and curre…

How does one decide what constitutes "basic"? Is a password-manager a "basic" feature? If so, then is "Passwords.app" bundled by Microsoft into Windows an unfair advantage because of distribution when compared to "1Password.app"? Ok, then, can Microsoft make a button called "Passwords" in their "Settings.app" and that qualifies as a non-competitive "basic" "Settings" feature?

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

#369

Post by phh »

adam_arthur wrote: post #281

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, if a competitor is willing to host the same data at cost.

Well, that's what happened with the "Office Open XML" standard, which has been a catastrophe. Microsoft perfectly handled every country to have their ISO standard pass. Even though it was in violation of ISO requirements, which many countries voiced. Those complaints "somehow" disappeared. The fact that at ISO you're not allowed to divulge who is paid by which company might be related. Or maybe not. Either way, IMO, the conclusion is that you can't delegate democratic functions to a non-democratic organization.

But I wholeheartedly agree with you on the principle. Interoperability brings innovation and competition. Not lock-ins/walled gardens. And interoperability requires standards not ""technical specification"" which is the new slang for oligopoly.

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

#370

Post by adam_arthur »

9dev wrote: post #364
adam_arthur wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company doesn't need to expose custom APIs on their data. If they implement a chat protocol, they must allow other clients to interface with it. For the data side, likely any requirements wouldn't go into effect until a dataset is deemed sufficiently large/societally important, and there could be a period of exclusivity similarly to the patent system to encourage innovation. This system works very well for new dr…

> The company doesn't need to expose custom APIs on their data. If they implement a chat protocol, they must allow other clients to interface with it. And how would that work without a way to talk to the company’s chat server, and document the way to do that, and commit to keeping that way of communicating reasonably stable? In other words, an API? Which implies sort of a commitment to the way that chat protocol work…

The comment you're replying to already answers this, so I'll refer you to that
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