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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

#541

Post by 9dev »

adam_arthur wrote: post #370
9dev wrote: post #364

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. 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

not really. An API doesn’t necessarily have to be a HTTP interface. A data schema is also an API, if the documents are made available. The endpoints where that data is available is. And you still need heaps of documentation that someone needs to maintain. Not every system has simple to, from, and content fields.

I just doubt you really thought this through.

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

#542

Post by kergonath »

xvector wrote: post #488
gehsty wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feels a bit like your forgetting Skype for business and lync already existed. I kinda agree with your point but I also feel it’s unfair on Microsoft, they are giving their customers more services for the same price, and the customers are using the services… I’m not sure the customer really loses out if ms are saving them another subscription + integration cost.

There is no justification, this is just more thinly-veiled rent-seeking from the EU.

Right, the EC is desperate to get that fraction of a percent of its budget from that pure, innocent, freedom-loving American company. Makes complete sense…

What is actually happening is that the American government is dysfunctional and can’t be arsed to do its job.

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

#543

Post by kergonath »

ClassyJacket wrote: post #377
colonwqbang wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple still charges extra for the Apple music service, right? Spotify costs $12/month, Apple music costs $11. If that's true then it seems market competition is working decently in that area. If you could launch a competing service and charge $10 you might have a chance. What Microsoft did was, they said "Hey we have a monopoly on office software. We should have a monopoly on chat too". And they started giving away T…

I'm not saying MS don't do shady stuff, but why single this out? YouTube is a monopoly on video and they bundle Music with Premium. Just seems like this is happening everywhere all the time.

> I'm not saying MS don't do shady stuff, but why single this out?

It’s an action started by Teams competitors. They have no interest in chasing YouTube. OTOH, the EC is definitely chasing more than one company, it’s all over the news. Google is scrutinised regularly.

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

#544

Post by cess11 »

berkut wrote: post #475
nextos wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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).

Yes, they broke this somewhat recently. Video &c. doesn't work in Chromium either.

So this means that I pull my customers into a competitor product, and they also get to hear me badmouth Teams if I find an opportunity to do so.

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

#545

Post by shiroiushi »

TrackerFF wrote: post #526
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.

It is almost impossible to pitch software to the government unless it also comes with enterprise-scale customer support. 9 out of 10 times I’ve been part of the buy-side, proprietary software has won due to the support. Even more so when the end users aren’t technical people. If the software doesn’t come with support options from the vendor, you’ll have to look into third-parties for that - which means another entire…

Sure, but with open-source software and a third-party support contract, if you get mad at the support vendor, you can get a contract with someone else without having to change your software stack.

I don't see how tying yourself to a single vendor is advantageous at all.

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

#546

Post by DANmode »

nilsbunger wrote: post #440
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.

The same thing happened to TCP/IP stacks in the 90s (and multiple alternate transport protocols). They were initially separate products, sold by different companies. Then TCP/IP was bundled into the OS in ~Windows 3.1. By today's lens you'd say TCP is part of the OS, but this wasn't the state of the world in the early 90s. If you had disallowed bundling then, we would still be buying separate TCP stacks for our OS!

...if your idea is to push the market so that Teams is an open standard and protocol, this might have relevance.

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

#547

Post by eesmith »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #519
hx8 wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ask about the tools I will be using during the interview process. There are several that I refuse to work with and will end the interview at the next possible polite point if they are required. Microsoft Windows is on my blacklist. The entire point of private retirement accounts and transferable skills is that you aren't required to stick with one employer. If your employer requires you to use bad tools then find a…

>then find a better employer What a clueless and entitled point of view. Entire industries are almost exclusively Microsoft (basically all those that make the modern civilized world work: medical, transportation, semiconductor, logistics, automotive, industrial, architecture, infrastructure, CAD, etc). Your choice then is unemployment. Not everyone is an app/web developer who can freely choose employers based on stac…

On the flip side, your comment is "Thank You Sir May I Have Another?"

If no one complains, not even the entitled who have some power, then the screws continue to tighten down.

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

#548

Post by DANmode »

tbrownaw wrote: post #516
bee_rider wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you sell somebody code you have an ethical responsibility to have done your best (and maintained a reasonable level of professional competence) to ensure it is defect free. Lots of companies don’t take that very seriously, which is bad, and a great reason to switch away from them. At least the government can bring the CEO before congress and waste his day. With open source code the responsibility is taken by the…

> When you sell somebody code you have an ethical responsibility to... > With open source code the responsibility is taken by the user instead. What is RHEL?

A known-good configuration, sold by an OSS support/services company.

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

#549

Post by pompino »

tolciho wrote: post #308
pompino wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you so upset that people derive a lot of value from Windows? Enough that they want to keep using it, and defend it because they don't agree with the "everything is broken" meme.

Because even if you don't touch Windows (or whatever mediocre malware Microsoft presently peddles) those folks come to you and say stuff like "skype won't start" and lo! it does not start, though after much clicking around and rebooting and trying the obvious things you discover that if you right-click and try "open with skype" on the skype icon then skype will start. That problem at some point disappeared as mysteri…

You can have your own view. Nobody is taking it away or forcing you to believe otherwise. My point is why are people so upset when someone has a different view or doesn't agree with your personal view on Microsoft?

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

#550

Post by DANmode »

WheatMillington wrote: post #305
sunaookami wrote: post #73

I already know how this will be solved: Microsoft will pay a (small) fine and file it under "the cost of doing business" while the damage is already done. Teams is one of the absolutely worst products ever programmed, it's hiliarious how bad it is. It only reached its market share because Microsoft gave it away "for free" with Office 365 or MS 365 or whatever it's called now.

I use Teams every day for work, I'm not sure why it's considered so bad? It seems user friendly and useful, to me. Non-tech worker (finance).

I've seen enough financial software to know that someone in your world may be used to slow, tire-fire software.

In that context, maybe Teams is user-friendly and high-performance!

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