Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

apnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

751–760 of 808 posts

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

#751

Post by sqeaky »

neonsunset wrote: post #663
sqeaky wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scattered years, a year contract here and there. The toxic culture event was 2023 and EA was 2022. The fist fight was 2006 or so. But interesting that you throw shade at Ruby with no explanation. Feel free to expand at length. I would like to hear your objections.

Ruby is just a bad technology - very slow, brittle, extremely messy the moment a codebase becomes larger than trivial, not ideal package management, unproductive. It was made work by many great engineers that would have either had more success with a different technology or would have spent less effort in achieving their goals with it. Pick C# or Kotlin with ASP.NET Core or Ktor and be faster at shipping both the ini…

Sure and while we both wait for visual studio to be installed, I will have solved the problem in Ruby already.

Edit - No Rails, I never said rails.

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

#752

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

darknavi wrote: post #743
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I changed from a Slack-using employer to a MS Teams-using employer around 2 years ago, I found it impossible to argue that the usability of MS Teams was even close to the usability of Slack. Slack was significantly better in this regard. MS Teams had better integration with some other MS services such as OneDrive. That's obviously going to be so, that's what it's for.

We use Slack for text comms and Teams for video meetings. Seems like a decent balance, Slack video calls seems very unpolished compared to the Teams video experience.

Good point, teams video calls seems better; Slack video was a late addition.

The Slack-using employer also used Zoom. MS is the all-in-one in this regard too.

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

#753

Post by vips7L »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #747
ThunderSizzle wrote: post #735

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of anti-Microsoft people that still use Github is astounding to me, and then just blame Microsoft for buying it. At some point, if people want an alternative to Github, perhaps it starts with people not using Github and switching to alternatives. Honestly, it would seem people like market concentration. I don't think people like having to use multiple repository management websites. However, I do wish it w…

Network effect. Especially for open source. The thinking is basically that GitHub is where developers find your project so if you don’t use GitHub you won’t find developers.

I think this ignores just how much better GitHub is compared to its competitors — at least from my experience of using bitbucket at work. GitHub rightfully should have more market share.

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

#754

Post by talldayo »

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.

Welcome back, I missed the fearmongering you were so well-known for back when the EU Commission announced their investigation. You're probably someone with a sizable 401k or Roth IRA, I'm guessing?

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

#757

Post by necovek »

throwAGIway wrote: post #259
pndy wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Endusers should have a total control over what is getting installed on their machines - just like we used to not so long ago or how some Linux distros allows you to select additional software. Each operating system coming from the biggest corporations should offer two paths: express/recommended setup and a fully customizable one for advanced users.

What if I want to buy a fully integrated, fully bundled install-and-forget OS? If the EU makes Apple unbundle all the good stuff from macOS I'll finally move to the US.

Making bundles is always ok as long as it's not commercially unsound way to push other competitors out. Antitrust rules mostly concern dominant players in a market because they are usually the only ones able to do that (though VC-backed companies that have been in the red for decade or more are similar).

In general, MacBooks have always been bundled with MacOS, and Apple did not hold a dominant position in laptops when they started bundling OS (and everyone else usually does too: computer is largely useless without an OS).

If you price bundles commercially (eg. price of Word itself should not equal price of the entire Office suite), and not at a loss, that is generally ok.

So if Apple is forced to unbundle the OS but decides to sell at $10 or $20 (usually the price of Windows on laptops you can get without an OS), do you think it changes anything for customers who like MacOS?

It only ensures Apple has to support those who don't want MacOS.

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

#758

Post by neonsunset »

sqeaky wrote: post #751
neonsunset wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ruby is just a bad technology - very slow, brittle, extremely messy the moment a codebase becomes larger than trivial, not ideal package management, unproductive. It was made work by many great engineers that would have either had more success with a different technology or would have spent less effort in achieving their goals with it. Pick C# or Kotlin with ASP.NET Core or Ktor and be faster at shipping both the ini…

Sure and while we both wait for visual studio to be installed, I will have solved the problem in Ruby already. Edit - No Rails, I never said rails.

I don’t use Visual Studio :)

But I guess by the time it installs Rails finally completes serving the first request.

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

#759

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

ThunderSizzle wrote: post #741
lesuorac wrote: post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it's a separate application I think the line has already been drawn. I don't think you should have to turn Edge into a paid product similar to how I don't think grocery stores should be forced to charge you if you use a shopping cart. If Microsoft wants to include Windows Defender for free but if they're increasing the cost of a Windows License to accommodate that development effort then it's not ok. Microsoft c…

But bundling exists everywhere. Why is Microsoft the only offender? Like you pointed out with cable, if I want just Disney Kids on cable, I need to buy all of Disney's channels, including ABC, etc. This is because that's how the cable provider has to buy it from the networks. Why aren't they being told they have to unbundled channels from each other? I can't pay per view sports games - they offer subscriptions that b…

> Why can't I just pay a few bucks to watch one game?

You could argue that preventing this is a positive bundling. e.g. the Cup final game doesn't exist without the first round games and quarter-finals, and the other league matches that you don't want to pay for. They need to be subsidised or the whole thing might not work or won't be as good.

But "you can't buy x without y" where x and y are in different markets is (ahem) a different ballgame.

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

#760

Post by rkuodys »

Wytwwww wrote: post #667
cujaneway wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is hurting competitors not the same as hurting consumers?

Companies intentionally trying not to hurt their competitors can't really be described as anything else than a cartel (even if it's not explicit) that's almost invariably horrible for consumers (.e.g. telecom companies, banks, etc. in many countries). Ideally you always want to see companies trying to run their competitors out of business by undercutting them and offering better products at lower prices. The issue wh…

Net negative. Long term it's gonna be net negative due to lower competition, as now there are usually only 2 players in town. Inevitably they are going to raide prices for customers and reduce earnings for drivers
Post reply on HN