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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

#421

Post by tyingq »

Wolfenstein98k wrote: post #414

The EU exists to subsidise EU businesses by taxing (fining) American ones. Why is it okay to sell a bundle that has spreadsheets and emails but not messaging and conferencing?

I believe the general category of antitrust is "tying agreements" where you tie a weaker market share product to a stronger one.

Also, I'm not arguing why it's okay, just that it's a normal part of antitrust law and not specific to the EU. The US FTC has an example on this page: https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...

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

#422

Post by Qwertious »

Auracle wrote: post #303
sunaookami wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yet we’d absolutely balk at a computer or phone not coming with a browser by default nowadays. I don’t really think that ruling was on the right side of history.

That's because the browser is a de-facto OS, which occurred only due to a sheer lack of actual OS market innovation - Debian had a package manager 20 years ago, Windows didn't until 2019. Browsers succeeded because apps ("websites") abstracted away the download/install process in a user friendly fashion.

That ruling's only fault was that it didn't go far enough in hammering Microsoft's anticompetitive "moat" practices.

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

#423

Post by Supermancho »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #415
farhadhf wrote: post #405

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…

In a just world, they will of course have to pay for all the damages ... In a just world I said.

> This move by the EU is good, but too little too late

Not to say damage didn't occur or that MSFT has a good track record of adhering to rulings, but it's potentially not too late for those in the future who could benefit.

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

#425

Post by ATsch »

hifromwork wrote: post #408
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).

Yes, this. linux sucks in a lot of ways. But it sucks for boring reasons I can deal with, like lack of resources, incompetence or even just ideas I disagree with. You know, just the every day inevitabilites that come with interacting with other human beings, even when they're doing their best.

But what is infinitely worse than that is, on top of all of those things still happening, also having a random chance of waking up every morning to discover that someone has very deliberately, specifically decided to make my life worse, not out of personal conviction, but because it makes a line go up somewhere in a board room on the other side of the world. That I can not deal with.

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

#426

Post by switch007 »

Wolfenstein98k wrote: post #414

The EU exists to subsidise EU businesses by taxing (fining) American ones. Why is it okay to sell a bundle that has spreadsheets and emails but not messaging and conferencing?

How do EU fines subsidise EU businesses?

https://competition-policy.ec.europa.eu/index/fines_en :

> Fines imposed on undertakings found in breach of EU antitrust rules are paid into the general EU budget. This money is not earmarked for particular expenses, but Member States' contributions to the EU budget for the following year are reduced accordingly. The fines therefore help to finance the EU and reduce the burden for taxpayers.

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

#427

Post by yunohn »

eindiran wrote: post #219
gostsamo wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally, you define a market by the market participants. There are people who need only the the office suite, and there are those who need the office suite and the colab chat but not necessarily by the same provider. This is visible by the fact that you have colab software providers like slack/zoom. Microsoft is targeted at the moment because they are market leader on the office suite market and they are leveraging…

I am generally open to this idea, but this particular way of defining what bundles are allowed or not seems incredibly weak. Take Adobe's Creative Cloud. There is almost no one in the world who uses all of the tools in it. There are dozens of alternatives made by other companies that only cover a single component software. Adobe is the market leader with virtually all of the component pieces of software. Why is the U…

This is actually a great counter example to the previous post’s perspective on bundling vs markets.

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

#428

Post by OJFord »

lolinder wrote: post #389
gostsamo wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally, you define a market by the market participants. There are people who need only the the office suite, and there are those who need the office suite and the colab chat but not necessarily by the same provider. This is visible by the fact that you have colab software providers like slack/zoom. Microsoft is targeted at the moment because they are market leader on the office suite market and they are leveraging…

> Google is not a market leader Do you have stats that show this? "Market share" sites never feel very trustworthy to me, but they all claim Google Workspace has a substantially higher market share than Office 365, and anecdotally that matches my experience. > addition, they don't have offline tools to separate from their workspace This doesn't make sense to me as an argument. It sounds like you're saying that becaus…

> they all claim Google Workspace has a substantially higher market share than Office 365, and anecdotally that matches my experience.

I 100% believe that is your experience as 'HN-commenting SWE/tech bro/STEM worker', but just as strongly doubt that that is correct in the broader market.

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

#429

Post by OJFord »

Modified3019 wrote: post #410
lotsofpulp wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”…

There do exist companies trying to compete on chat and complaining about it, I'd guess. (Whereas Gmail is doing fine and Thunderbird is free.)

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

#430

Post by znpy »

farhadhf wrote: post #405

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…

> This move by the EU is good, but too little too late

You should be thankful at all this is happening. On the other side of the ocean bundling office and teams is still perfectly legal.

I wonder why nobody at the US antitrust office has said anything at all.

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