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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

#571

Post by j-r-d »

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".

Because companies were already paying for it. Where I work now moved to Teams and they openly said it's not as good as Zoom, but we need to move because we're already paying for Office and so it doesn't make financial sense to pay for an additional duplicate service.

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

#572

Post by mrweasel »

chucke1992 wrote: post #311
mrweasel wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It think that one of the issues in this case. Teams rather terrible, but so is everything else. I worked for a company that used Google Chat internally and we'd use Teams with some clients. People kept telling me how much better Slack is, but now that I work for a company that does have Slack, I can't say that it's any better. In fact I'd probably rank Google Chat highest of those three options. Microsoft is giving p…

the problem is that EU basically wants Teams to be more expensive so that Slack will become cheaper and thus more attractive. It is hilarious that Slack still has not been able to introduce proper video calls while introducing relatively useless integrations.

If Microsoft unbundles Teams, they can still make it available for free and nothing will have been resolved.

I do agree with the EU that Teams should be unbundled, but unless you have a cheaper and/or better alternative I don't see it being all that effective. Teams also integrate into Active Directory and the whole Microsoft ecosystem in a way most other systems just doesn't do (not that they can't).

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

#573

Post by snowpid »

burnerthrow008 wrote: post #557
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.

> 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's not. The argument you're replying to is remarkably similar to the ones in the EU+Apple threads: Why should iOS be considered a "general purpose" OS? Because people consider it as such. Why isn't Xbox or Switch a "…

The gatekeeper criteria are open. Could you precise mention which criteria is bad instead of making strong assumptions?

I don't see why Spotify is a gate keeper. You have e.g. Deezer or Apple Music and you can switch very easily.

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

#574

Post by kwanbix »

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…

As a product manager myself, it means that the value that people got from your app, was not enough to fight a free product. And I mean free as in if you are already paying for a subscription, and it gets added without aditional cost. I have worked at companies that payed for either Google Workspace or Office 365, and they also payed for Slack.

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

#575

Post by watwut »

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".

The difference is that no one was using those. Since companies already pay for office and Teams is bundled, managements are forcing workforce to use it.

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

#576

Post by SassyBird »

DANmode wrote: post #550
WheatMillington wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

You must not have seen Bloomberg Terminal then. Most devs on this forum wouldn’t be even able to build anything this performant and ergonomic.

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

#577

Post by chillfox »

gostsamo wrote: post #109
ssahoo wrote: post #63

Why don't they apply the laws universally and effectively make this kind of bundling illegal for mega corporations? For endusers, it feels like they are playing with different rules for Microsoft Apple Adobe and Google. Since EU waits until the damage is done and milks them, it barely helps the situation for consumers. For corps they just assume the penalty as cost of doing business.

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.

Word and Excel aren't really that related either. The only reason we think of them as part of an office suite is because they have been bundled for a long time. As far as I can tell most people don't really use both, they mostly using one or the other.

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

#578

Post by antihero »

elevatedastalt wrote: post #485
antihero wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do that, but if you get the job you’ll likely be having to use it for a lot more stuff. It’s a sign of a culture that wants to bundle stuff up and manage it in the corporate way as opposed to using the tools that people want to use to do their job.

So what product should they have been using instead? Meet, which is a Google bundle? Or the China owned Zoom, or god forbid Webex?

Slack, Meet, Zoom.

Teams tries to be the default chat app and video app and sucks at both.

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

#579

Post by vasco »

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…

My company switched half the development from Gitlab to Github after many years of being happy customers because they bundle Github pricing also with the rest.

I'm not even talking about azure and the anti-competitive shit they do there. Teams is but a drop in the ocean.

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

#580

Post by teitoklien »

kwanbix wrote: post #574
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…

As a product manager myself, it means that the value that people got from your app, was not enough to fight a free product. And I mean free as in if you are already paying for a subscription, and it gets added without aditional cost. I have worked at companies that payed for either Google Workspace or Office 365, and they also payed for Slack.

That’s how monopolies get formed, make it unsustainable for competition to exist, and then jack up prices when they all die.

That lower cost people pay upfront thanks to monopolies, is then drained back with interest, using higher prices, reduction in social mobility (of new founders/startups), reduction in innovation & increase in rent-seeking behaviour.

Breaking up monopolies has been long overdue, it’s a good thing its starting now.

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