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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

#471

Post by caminante »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #456
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…

I am confused by this comment. Was your startup not affected by the previous 10+ years of Microsoft chat products? Examples: Office Communicator, Lync, and Skype for Business. I fail to see how Teams was the "nail in the coffin".

Every entrepreneur wants to assume the counterfactual that but for their startup dying for reason #6354, it would've lived!

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

#472

Post by _heimdall »

immibis wrote: post #197
_heimdall wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laws shouldn't be written without clear lines - how can a person who wants to avoid breaking the law do that if we have an ever growing list of laws full of gray area and blurry lines?

If you're a big company and the penalty is only a fine... there is not much need to be absolutely sure you don't break the law. It is just another risk, like the risk of a data center catching on fire, that is to be managed, not avoided at all costs. Law for you and me means someone might go to jail and that's worth avoiding all costs, but for a company it just means spending more money or receiving less. Cases are a…

No I'd actually rather see the opposite. If we really think its imperative that the government defines corporate laws then I'd want to see companies and those making decisions held legally liable.

Corporate law as it stands today is more of a game of accounting, trying to figure out what laws you break and how you make more profit from it then you may lose in court. Is it really so important that our governments define these laws only to chase companies for legal cases that either amount to nothing or a fraction of the profits gained? Would we be better off either not having the laws at all, or by enforcing those laws with criminal penalty to those people shown to have knowingly made decisions to break the law?

> Would we be better off either not having the laws at all, or by enforcing those laws with criminal penalty to those people shown to have knowingly made decisions to break the law?

Yes to this part though. We shouldn't be writing laws enforcible in perpetuity when we can't even define what the law covers. How are citizens meant to stay on the right side of the law when the laws are purposely gray get still punishable after clarifying the details later?

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

#473

Post by yazzku »

znpy wrote: post #430
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.

The US is too invested (literally) in Big Tech right now, as it gives them a geopolitical advantage. That's why they have not broken up anything for real lately. But this feed-the-giant policy is already, though slowly, starting to crack. Look at how Congress is caught by the balls by Microsoft (“The US government’s dependence on Microsoft poses a serious threat to US national security,” says US senator Ron Wyden. [1]), and yet they cannot do anything about it because they have no alternative; a self-inflicted wound from decades of inaction.

Like the other comment here, it's ironic that it is the EU pulling from the market/capitalism playbook now.

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/the-us-government-has-a-microsof...

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

#474

Post by trelane »

chucke1992 wrote: post #322
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.

Except the end conclusion was that "paying for a browser is stupid".

The end conclusion was "having a single superdominant proprietary browser is stupid." This probably extends to other communications software like productivity apps.

The only reason the Web exists as it does now is because of Firefox. Even with the ruling, Microsoft put IE into maintenance mode and disbanded the team once IE6 won. The only reason IE7 came about was because Netscape opened their source code, and eventually firefox started really gaining popularity. And that was only because it was a foundation and volunteers, not a proprietary business (otherwise it would have died like the others.)

So you can thank the Netscape and Mozilla folks that the modern web isn't still IE6 with the state of the art being the marquee tag, ActiveX, and VBSctipt/ancient JavaScript.

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

#475

Post by berkut »

nextos wrote: post #466
djbusby wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Teams from Chrome&Firefox on Linux without a teams account. I've attended 100s of US State government agency meetings this way, for many years.

"Some browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari, don't support Teams calls and meetings. Unfortunately, some important features won’t be available, including: Video, Audio, Desktop, window, and app sharing." https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/join-a-microsoft-...

That's been within the last year I think - I too have been using Linux and Firefox for calls in Teams meetings from 2020 to last year when I had to move to the Teams Linux client (which they're deprecating, so having to move to Chrome or Edge).

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

#476

Post by dmix »

caminante wrote: post #471
throwaway2037 wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am confused by this comment. Was your startup not affected by the previous 10+ years of Microsoft chat products? Examples: Office Communicator, Lync, and Skype for Business. I fail to see how Teams was the "nail in the coffin".

Every entrepreneur wants to assume the counterfactual that but for their startup dying for reason #6354, it would've lived!

Yeah I'm not fully buying a startup lives or dies based on packaging deal of a long-embedded mega corp.

Unless his startup was VC funded and was already seriously penetrating enterprise and then couldn't get round C of financing because their 100+ person sales team couldn't make the high growth math make sense.

Otherwise usually your value prop can't be closely tied to *relatively* minor accounting decisions in the early days or you're already DOA when facing an entrenched opponent whose team can easily undercut you well beyond generic bundling deals (whether via strong existing relationships, making wider non-standard sweetheart deals that wouldn't be under regulatory scrutiny, and marketing budgets).

Don't get me wrong this can harm markets generally, and megacorps should be held to higher scrutiny, but usually it's not that simple.

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

#477

Post by osrec »

tenacious_tuna wrote: post #349
osrec wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would replace government with people: people should collectively demand what you have described. This ultimately is a function of education, which will get better as technical knowledge becomes more widely and freely available. As you say, it's only a matter of time before the walled gardens start to crumble.

> I would replace government with people This is... The entire point of a government. Yes, they're flawed, but they're meant to exercise the will of the people, especially in terms of regulating entities that have outsized power vs. an individual citizen (corporations, wealthy magnates, etc).

Perhaps, but you're missing my point. Governments are out of touch with what people need and even if they're trying to help, they'll get things very wrong (for example, those annoying cookie popups we've all had forced upon us).

People know what they want, and will vote with their wallets. As long as options are allowed to exist, you can trust a well informed public to gravitate towards the most optimal solution over time.

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

#478

Post by jollofricepeas »

dmix wrote: post #476
caminante wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every entrepreneur wants to assume the counterfactual that but for their startup dying for reason #6354, it would've lived!

Yeah I'm not fully buying a startup lives or dies based on packaging deal of a long-embedded mega corp. Unless his startup was VC funded and was already seriously penetrating enterprise and then couldn't get round C of financing because their 100+ person sales team couldn't make the high growth math make sense. Otherwise usually your value prop can't be closely tied to *relatively* minor accounting decisions in the e…

Nah.

My best guess is that the pandemic is what happened — if this story is true.

The bundling didn’t matter when no one needed a large amount of seats for an in-office workforce.

But during COVID and currently, there was no better pricing than what Microsoft is offering for all the things (ex. Azure + 0365 + GitHub).

The market shifted from Slack, Zoom and to Teams for large enterprises when they recognized that no one was coming back into the office.

Source: I bought enterprise software for a Fortune 20 during COVID until I launched my startup.

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

#479

Post by mistrial9 »

DaoVeles wrote: post #437
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…

It is an unfortunate state of the world is that those can use unethical moves to quickly crush others will live to fight another day. By the time the law catches up, they have made their billions.

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves? .. a raiding action by a quasi-legal gang can actually kill your business, and all parties involved know it.

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

#480

Post by Rastonbury »

xzjis wrote: post #401

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 fo…

Hate to break it to you but even if they broke out pricing and SKU, the MS rep is going to offer Teams a separate product and majority of the time bosses will buy it out of convenience. Why bother evaluating slack/zoom when mail, calendar, files,call recording and transcript are integrated with Teams especially for old school companies
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