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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

#761

Post by joshjje »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #705
Perseids wrote: post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the end of the day it should only matter if Microsoft's practices are hurting consumers rather than their competitors. Focusing on short term repercussions for consumers has significantly hurt long term consumer interests and there is evidence that it hurt the economy in general. In the decades preceding the 1980s it was generally understood that competition itself is a necessity for effective free markets and t…

What makes this so difficult is that it would be hard to fix even if there was agreement on the problem. If governments were to parcel up markets and stop companies from crossing rather arbitrary dividing lines, it would effectively stop all investment in disruptive technologies because any real disruption most likely infringes on some of these laws. If you stop large companies from expanding into neighbouring indust…

Yeah I don't know how you would break up Microsoft Office or regulate that. There are competitors but it's so pervasive, most companies use it. You'd have to create a public API that other competitors could use, and the HR lady is going to be pissed!

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

#762

Post by bratbag »

throwAGIway wrote: post #724
DANmode wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of those entrepreneurs are explicitly agreed with by antitrust regulators of major jurisdictions...?

Why should I care what a protectionist government agency thinks? As a customer, I am very satisfied with the deal Microsoft offered.

For now you are.

Enshitification ramps up after the competition has been destroyed.

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

#763

Post by isk517 »

lmm wrote: post #387
isk517 wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft could easily avoid a lot of legal hassle and earn a lot of goodwill if they just offered a version of Windows with nothing but the most basic stuff pre-installed. Hell, just go the typical/custom install that a most other programs have during the initial start up, most people will just select the option that installs Office and the other crap anyway. The people that don't want it will never use it and curre…

They do, buying the pro or server versions lets you avoid all the junk. Turns out people would rather moan on the internet than pay up.

Server yes, pro... LOL.

Installed plenty of Windows 10/11 Pro recently, comes with a whole bunch of stuff that in no way benefits business clients and in many ways will hamper them.

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

#764

Post by lesuorac »

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…

> But bundling exists everywhere. Why is Microsoft the only offender?

You can't regulate every offender at the exact same time. Who you go after and when is always a political decision. This is basically the claim everybody was making when Android was in anti-trust trouble and everybody was like "How can you go after Android when Apple has a walled garden" and now Apple is in a hot seat.

Look how long it took for TicketMaster/LiveNation to get into the hot seat. Yes, it's not really fair that people get to cause problems for so long before being punished but that's life and it doesn't mean you should give people a free pass since you can't go after them all at once.

> 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 bundle the entire season. The NFL is the worst on this. Why can't I just pay a few bucks to watch one game?

I wouldn't argue that Panthers v Patriots is a different application than Broncos v Buccaneers.

Although I think I was fairly clear in my other post that I think the cable bundling is anti-competitive.

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

#765

Post by gehsty »

_xivi wrote: post #559
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.

> I’m not sure the customer really loses out if ms are saving them another subscription + integration cost. Not only the customer will pay the price 10 fold down the line, the entire industry/ecosystem will suffer after Microsoft effectively kill every alternative product. They're not doing the customers a favor. It's a business 101 tactic to dominate the market. In the end, the customer will be abused and strangled…

Is it not a case the market will fix - if Microsoft increases costs in an attempt to strangle the customer, the higher prices create an opportunity for new players?

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

#766

Post by gehsty »

kergonath wrote: post #542
xvector wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The fines the eu want are percentages of global revenue, so will be significant sums of money. Maybe they are not so bothered about the money but want to disadvantage the us corperations.

For me the US has largely got it right and EU wrong. You can see this in the number of EU based tech giants. Would the EU be bringing these laws if Apple / google were European?

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

#767

Post by palata »

throwAGIway wrote: post #659
palata wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

Yeah it does, not sure why are we talking about that though. It's a complete misrepresentation of the situation. Let's take Google services as an example. I'm no fan of Google but their integrated search/Maps/PoI/hotels/directions/flight tickets experience was perfect , my workflow depends on it a lot. Now I can't use it without a US VPN, the only thing I get without it are some useless web search results and a small…

So much frustration here :-/

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

#768

Post by bongodongobob »

bearjaws wrote: post #698
moontear wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is the Teams we are talking about here integrated into Windows? Teams is integrated into M365 and taking Outlook as an example you can register another calling/status app just like others do so your online status and calling functionality is not Teams (used to be Skype).

It's now installed by default and in your task bar on Windows 11. It's not even just an icon either, its similar to OneDrive where removing it is non-trivial. https://www.reddit.com/r/Intune/comments/10whv8c/hows_everyo... https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/q4elim/can_we_ta... When will Slack get this same level of access? They won't ever.

What do you mean by "access"?

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

#769

Post by Wytwwww »

rkuodys wrote: post #760
Wytwwww wrote: post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Net negative

Compared to taxis? Well I guess it depends on where you live, but I wouldn't' generally agree.

It's also a highly commoditized market with little real barriers to entry (at least on the local level) and drivers/users can pretty much instantly switch to a different app so I think it will be reasonable hard for Uber/etc. to do that without someone undercutting them.

> due to lower competition

Still better than no competition and prices being set by a legal cartel (i.e. how taxis worked/work in many places)

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

#770

Post by sqeaky »

neonsunset wrote: post #758
sqeaky wrote: post #751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well I never said anything about rails.

I sure would like to see the software development shop that uses C# and not Visual Studio.

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