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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

#401

Post by xzjis »

The problem is that it's already too late. In my company, we used Teams because it was "free" (they even added a free version that lasted between COVID-19 and 2023), bundled with everything else, and now that we have to pay for Teams alone, we won't consider switching to something else because people are used to Teams. We never considered an alternative, and we will never consider one, and it's just more expensive for us now (which is Microsoft's way of complying with EU's rules, so Microsoft's fault).

Antitrusts are too slow to happen.

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

#402

Post by bigmattystyles »

lmm wrote: post #387
isk517 wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They do, buying the pro or server versions lets you avoid all the junk. Turns out people would rather moan on the internet than pay up.

Unfortunately, this doesn't feel true anymore, I have an enterprise version and it's still pushy with its news feed, bing, and other pre-installed stuff.

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

#403

Post by bee_rider »

naikrovek wrote: post #374
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.

Here’s the thing, though: Linux as a desktop is absolute trash and it doesn’t matter if you have been using it as a desktop operating system for 30 years, it’s still absolutely trash for anyone with an idea of what a desktop OS should be. It is trash in the exact same way that GIMP is trash compared to professional tools. The quality just isn’t there, and the quality will never be there so long as design decisions ar…

It isn’t trash, it just isn’t trying to provide a customer service like relationship for non-technical users. Why would any distro do that? It just seems like a headache, for no benefit.

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

#404

Post by mr_toad »

naikrovek wrote: post #374
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.

Here’s the thing, though: Linux as a desktop is absolute trash and it doesn’t matter if you have been using it as a desktop operating system for 30 years, it’s still absolutely trash for anyone with an idea of what a desktop OS should be. It is trash in the exact same way that GIMP is trash compared to professional tools. The quality just isn’t there, and the quality will never be there so long as design decisions ar…

Modern windows with unmatched UI elements of various generations, horrible DPI scaling and frankly antiquated design elements is starting to look more like Linux than Linux.

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

#405

Post by farhadhf »

This essentially killed my (EU-based) startup in the project management and collaborate space. Before MSFT bundled Teams with O365 we were rapidly growing and closing enterprise customers in the automotive, energy and education industries with high retention rates. Right around the time the Teams bundling started our retention dropped, churn went through the roof, growth slowed down, we failed to raise our next round because of it and had to drastically downsize the company, causing even more churn (about 80% net churn in 2 years). This move by the EU is good, but too little too late - 99% of the companies that were hurt by this have already shut down, and the ones still running will take years to recover...

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

#406

Post by leni536 »

tombert wrote: post #334
antihero wrote: post #330

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.

I just had an interview last week on Teams and I couldn't join the meeting from a browser where I was already logged in. It just somehow redirected me back to the main Teams page, with no errors mentioned whatsoever.

I had to paste the meeting link into an incognito window to successfully join. This was on Linux.

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

#407

Post by pembrook »

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…

The problem is open protocols can just as easily be consolidated down to network monopolies at the application layer.

Look at what happened to SMS (Apple's malicious implementation pushing everyone onto propriety networks like WhatsApp). Or email, where Outlook and Gmail have a bulletproof duopoly, leading to decades of stagnation. Outlook still renders emails with the 2006-era Microsoft Word html engine (Gmail is almost as behind on this), hence why email still doesn't support a lot of modern (>10 years old) accessibility features.

Things like ownership over domain names in the email protocol still create monopolies -- since Google owns gmail.com, it's literally like them owning your telephone number/mailbox. If you're like 99.9% of consumers without their own domain name for email, you cannot switch. Gmail owns you.

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

#408

Post by hifromwork »

georgeecollins wrote: post #386

Teams is a pain in the neck! If you make an office calendar appointment for a zoom, Microsoft "helps" you by creating a teams invite in the text of the invitation that gets sent out. So there is always a chance someone you invite will click on the wrong link to be in the meeting. If you ever click on this link yourself teams will install on your system and try in the run in the background every time you boot your com…

The only thing I can think of when reading this is the "damn, you live like this?" meme. I can't imagine using OS that does this to you and not being angry all the time (I'm not tribalistic, Linux has its own set of infuriating problems, but at least it feels like I'm in control).

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

#409

Post by hifromwork »

naikrovek wrote: post #374
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.

Here’s the thing, though: Linux as a desktop is absolute trash and it doesn’t matter if you have been using it as a desktop operating system for 30 years, it’s still absolutely trash for anyone with an idea of what a desktop OS should be. It is trash in the exact same way that GIMP is trash compared to professional tools. The quality just isn’t there, and the quality will never be there so long as design decisions ar…

Most people interact with a computer only via web browser, office suite and maybe a few additional programs (zoom, teams). I think some of my family members almost wouldn't notice the difference if they were to suddenly start using Linux Mint.

Your idea of what a desktop OS should be feels subjective. I'm using Linux as a desktop operating system for 20 years, I've used Windows before, I use Windows sometimes even today (currently only in VMs dedicated to malware analysis and reverse engineering tools), and - to me - Windows is much more annoying. This feels like personal preference and not an objective statement like you did.

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

#410

Post by Modified3019 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #137
gostsamo wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because this is not bundling of features, but of market products. Here the bundling merges two markets which are not related, while it might make sense to bundle word and excel for example which are parts of an office suite while teams is totally different business solution.

Why is excel and word any more connected than teams and excel or teams and word? Or even outlook? If outlook can be grouped with “office suite”, and EU didn’t have a problem with that, why not Teams? It is also for communicating with people.

Yeah, I’m all for monopoly busting, but I don’t understand what kind of criteria are in use here. I’ve yet to see a definition that would allow me to apply rules in a coherent way.

My own company uses office 365, and of all the included programs, I basically only use excel, outlook, and teams. I haven’t even opened word in years, all documents are shared as PDFs. As such, word has no more inherent need for “bundling” than teams.

It just seems arbitrary. I’d be more comfortable just stating that companies over a certain size can’t bundle at all.

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