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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

#641

Post by palata »

throwAGIway wrote: post #635
kergonath wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The probability that they are actually a EU resident and move to the US because of app bundling is close to zero. And yes, that would be completely ridiculous.

I said finally, meaning it's the last straw, not that it's the sole reason.

"They used to sell exclusively hot-dogs, and now they sell hot-dogs and hamburgers. That's the last straw, I'm going back to the US where they only sell hot-dogs!"

You have to admit it sounds slightly ridiculous, right?

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

#642

Post by Wytwwww »

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…

That's am understandable perspective but wouldn't this more or less apply to any product any large company is selling as part of a bundle?

e.g. selling Word/Excel/PowerPoint together is hurting any start-up that might want to enter the document processing/spreadsheet/etc markets? Free browsers killed the entire market that was starting to appear in the 90s etc. etc.

Should office suites be banned? Should Adobe be only allowed to sell subscriptions/licenses for individual apps?

At the end of the day it should only matter if Microsoft's practices are hurting consumers rather than their competitors.

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

#643

Post by daemin »

BoxOfRain wrote: post #629
3D30497420 wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems to be the reason for a lot of services. Amazon/YouTube/Apple/etc. Music don't need to be better than Spotify, but just good enough that someone won't pay for a competitor. This limits the competitors potential revenue and helps keep them from growing into stronger competition. Plus, you use your market incumbency to stifle competition in other ways (e.g., putting advertisements for Apple Music in settings)…

Also you can just wear your customers down over time apparently. I wish I could make Apple Music's subscription nag screen go away for example, I have local music I sync to it iPod-style for when I'm travelling through areas with poor data reception and every single time I open the app it whinges at me that I'm not subscribed. What will it take to make these companies realise I'm perfectly happy with my current music…

Unfortunately because you're not a customer, they'll never stop.

Often times they won't stop even if you are a customer as in the case of Microsoft insisting that I backup all my files to their OneDrive that came bundled with Office. I get constant nag notifications to "finish setting up backup" even though I have alternative backup solutions and only want to use OneDrive as an offsite storage, not as a sync system.

I would love to tell the software to "never bug me again", but instead we only have options of "Yes!" and "Not now, please bother me again".

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

#644

Post by Wytwwww »

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.

Is Microsoft making billions from Teams? I assume they only made it to enhance the value of their office suite/subscription.

It's a bit like saying that that them bundling PowerPoint together with their other apps is unfair towards any startup potentially wanting to enter that market. Which very well might be true but what's so special about Teams? MS and other companies have been bundling apps together since forever...

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

#645

Post by swores »

Wytwwww wrote: post #642
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…

That's am understandable perspective but wouldn't this more or less apply to any product any large company is selling as part of a bundle? e.g. selling Word/Excel/PowerPoint together is hurting any start-up that might want to enter the document processing/spreadsheet/etc markets? Free browsers killed the entire market that was starting to appear in the 90s etc. etc. Should office suites be banned? Should Adobe be onl…

> At the end of the day it should only matter if Microsoft's practices are hurting consumers rather than their competitors.

On the one hand that's a broadly reasonable goal, however the point of having laws preventing anti-competitive behaviour is founded in the logic that one company unfairly preventing there being competition from other companies is in itself a form of consumer harm due to the fact that it both prevents consumers from having choice, and also therefore in the longer term allows the monopolistic company to raise prices without consumers having any option other than to pay more or go without.

So in reality the harming or competitors can be considered the harming of consumers.

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

#646

Post by Wytwwww »

jadengeller wrote: post #612
kwanbix wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can choose to also use slack, or the OP app, if you think the beneffit you get by using the app is greater than the value of paying for it. Nobody is preventing you. Since MS included it for free, is not like you can not pay for the other app because you used the money to pay for teams. I personally don't see the value on slack, but like I said before, I have worked at companies where we had both, office/slack or…

it's not a great market for consumers if we allow big business to undercut pricing and kill competition government should help us coordinate to prevent this Nash equilibria

> undercut pricing and kill competition

Yeah but nobody minded not having to pay for web browsers, file manager, antivirus software and bunch of other stuff.

Companies have been bundling their different software products together since almost forever and while there are some disadvantages arguable this has benefited consumers overall. At least I wouldn't be too glad about having to buy separate licenses (or pay separate subscriptions) for Excel, Word and PowerPoint (or any other product bundle like Jetbrains IDEs for every language etc. etc.).

Most people would also not rather get a non-functional barebones OS whenever they get a new PC and have to chose and install all the basic apps themselves.

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

#647

Post by ThunderSizzle »

swores wrote: post #645
Wytwwww wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's am understandable perspective but wouldn't this more or less apply to any product any large company is selling as part of a bundle? e.g. selling Word/Excel/PowerPoint together is hurting any start-up that might want to enter the document processing/spreadsheet/etc markets? Free browsers killed the entire market that was starting to appear in the 90s etc. etc. Should office suites be banned? Should Adobe be onl…

> At the end of the day it should only matter if Microsoft's practices are hurting consumers rather than their competitors. On the one hand that's a broadly reasonable goal, however the point of having laws preventing anti-competitive behaviour is founded in the logic that one company unfairly preventing there being competition from other companies is in itself a form of consumer harm due to the fact that it both pre…

However, this is an interesting problem. By nature of competition, every customer a competitor takes is a customer missed. So when is competition anti-competive?

In the story above, a competitor to Teams couldn't "keep up". Is that really Microsoft's problem? Should Microsoft have made Teams more useless, more expensive, or less integrated so that competitors that couldn't make their own cheaper or better version had a chance to keep getting customers?

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

#648

Post by [deleted] »

Mashimo wrote: post #640
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".

> Office Communicator, Lync, and Skype for Business. I don't think MS Windows ever shipped with these.

[deleted]

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

#649

Post by Wytwwww »

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.

> On the other side of the ocean bundling office and teams

So is bundling office and PowerPoint which killed a massive number of presentation apps before they were even born. How is this particularly different? Should bundling any apps/sofware/services together be illegal? Should that only apply to specific companies?

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

#650

Post by Wytwwww »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #461
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 amazed the EU is being more capitalistic and breaking up monopolies. WE should be doing that. This is how capitalism thrives. Break up large companies in different markets. Also break up Amazon and AWS already.

> EU is being more capitalistic and breaking up monopolies

Has that ever actually happened? Or do you have any reason to believe it might in the future?

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