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Microsoft faces antitrust scrutiny from the EU over Teams, Office 365

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Re: Microsoft faces antitrust scrutiny from the EU over Teams, Office 365

#131

Post by [deleted] »

leokennis wrote: post #67
Shrezzing wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Slack really dropped the ball in 2020, and that's ultimately why the inferior Teams and Zoom platforms have been able to solidify their market shares, and Discord was able to bastardise some of Slack's old market share. It took Slack nearly 2 years after the pandemic started to introduce features like Huddles - by which point, everyone who needed video conferencing software (which was basically every white-co…

Also, Teams integrates with the other MS stuff. If I share files in a channel, in the background it is "just" a SharePoint which in turn I can add to my OneDrive. Meaning I can save a file in Word to that SharePoint and everyone in the channel can access it.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft faces antitrust scrutiny from the EU over Teams, Office 365

#132

Post by Arathorn »

EGreg wrote: post #126
draugadrotten wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teams is a security nightmare, and Sharepoint as well. Access permissions are nearly impossible to grasp for normal users. The feature that all files dropped are shared instantly by everyone through sharepoint is a huge security risk. People in general have no understanding that they are sharing files with everyone that can join a Teams channel, meaning that confidential and sensitive information frequently gets adde…

What if there was a free, open source alternative for Teams? I don’t mean Matrix or Mastodon. I mean something you could run on-prem and it would have chats, meetings, attach files etc. Do you know anything like this?

Why don't you mean Matrix? This is precisely what Element is, built on Matrix: https://element.io

Re: Microsoft faces antitrust scrutiny from the EU over Teams, Office 365

#133

Post by BarryMilo »

draugadrotten wrote: post #88
leokennis wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, Teams integrates with the other MS stuff. If I share files in a channel, in the background it is "just" a SharePoint which in turn I can add to my OneDrive. Meaning I can save a file in Word to that SharePoint and everyone in the channel can access it.

Teams is a security nightmare, and Sharepoint as well. Access permissions are nearly impossible to grasp for normal users. The feature that all files dropped are shared instantly by everyone through sharepoint is a huge security risk. People in general have no understanding that they are sharing files with everyone that can join a Teams channel, meaning that confidential and sensitive information frequently gets adde…

Teams made me realize no one cares about security until it's too late.

Re: Microsoft faces antitrust scrutiny from the EU over Teams, Office 365

#134

Post by bob1029 »

leokennis wrote: post #67
Shrezzing wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Slack really dropped the ball in 2020, and that's ultimately why the inferior Teams and Zoom platforms have been able to solidify their market shares, and Discord was able to bastardise some of Slack's old market share. It took Slack nearly 2 years after the pandemic started to introduce features like Huddles - by which point, everyone who needed video conferencing software (which was basically every white-co…

Also, Teams integrates with the other MS stuff. If I share files in a channel, in the background it is "just" a SharePoint which in turn I can add to my OneDrive. Meaning I can save a file in Word to that SharePoint and everyone in the channel can access it.

This is 95% of why we use it.

We have Our new hires can log with their work account using a shrink-wrapped machine from Best Buy and will have all of their needed applications ready to go & signed-in without going to random vendor sites or file shares.

Re: Microsoft faces antitrust scrutiny from the EU over Teams, Office 365

#135

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

CSMastermind wrote: post #91
jp_nc wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack dropped the ball earlier than that on audio/video. They acquired Screenhero in 2015 and did nothing of substance with it. Also, the lack of any real meeting features means that Zoom or Teams always has to be in the picture.

This still makes me mad. Screenhero was the best screensharing software I've used to this day. If anyone here knows the inside story of what went down with that acquisition, please share because I was expecting such great things when I heard Slack got them and then ... just nothing. Was it a tech integration problem? A key team member leaving? Like what happened?

I think part of it was because around the same time that Chromium (which Electron is based on, thusly inherited by Slack) added baked-in support for capturing the user's screen and individual application windows - so Slack had no incentive to spend money to build their own native screen-capture and sharing code when they could simply wait and do nothing and then get it for free.

...but that still doesn't explain why Slack otherwise seems frozen-in-time: none of the significant end-user usability and quality-of-life issues I've had with Slack since I started using it in 2016 have been addressed (e.g. we can't right-click a message to get its context-menu: you still have to hunt for that awkwardly-placed "..." menu button).

See https://slack.com/release-notes/windows - this is their changelist for their Windows release and most of the releases since 2020 are described as "tweaks", was "tinkered with", or is "tuned-up" which, or "minor security updates" - which, as any npm user will tell you just means they ran `npm update` and not much else (well, besides the bare minimum of automated testing).

Re: Microsoft faces antitrust scrutiny from the EU over Teams, Office 365

#136

Post by manuelabeledo »

llimos wrote: post #118

This is just weird because there has been a chat app as part of Office since 2007 (Office Communicator, then Lync, then Skype for Business, then Teams). That's way before Slack even existed. Is the claim that it's anti-competitive simply because they made their existing chat functionality better ? Or because Slack decided to launch a standalone product? Can I make a standalone Excel competitor and then claim Microsof…

I didn’t use Lync back in the day, but I used Skype.

Skype didn’t have half of the functionality Teams provides. Teams, like Slack, aims at bundling the whole workplace experience in a single app, with actual groups and bidirectional integrations.

And of course, Teams defaults to Microsoft products for every single integration that can communicate with one.

I would say that regulators didn’t care enough, or were aware of, the potential risks of Skype being bundled with Office because it wasn’t that popular to begin with. On the other hand, this may be a preventive move to avoid another Outlook crapfest from happening.

Re: Microsoft faces antitrust scrutiny from the EU over Teams, Office 365

#137

Post by roody15 »

Just a side note the Microsoft Teams installer is really annoying.

Install Office 2021lts and Teams gets installed and set to autostart for all users. This has the feeling of desperation and crap ware IMO … I will launch Teams if I want to use it.

To remove you will find the Microsoft Teams store app and regular app in the add remove programs… scroll down and you will find another Microsoft Teams system wide installer listed… why?

Teams works okay and no need for the program to come at users this way.. it’s just another annoying hook to use a “Microsoft account”

Re: Microsoft faces antitrust scrutiny from the EU over Teams, Office 365

#139

Post by kwanbix »

ethbr0 wrote: post #121
kwanbix wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My current company uses Google's Workspace and Google Chat. My previous company used Workspace also, but they used Slack. For my startup, we use Google Workspace, and I would never ever pay the same amount of money I pay for GW to have Slack. The value proposition of Slack is not that valuable to charge what they charge. I would happily pay 1 or 2 euros per month per user, no more. I have never used Teams. Nobody is…

That's good for you, but you are aware there are many, many Microsoft shops? And those people are often forced to use Teams because Microsoft sold to the VP/C*?

So? What you are saying is that Microsoft cannot add functionality?

So then make all companies only sell one product.

One company sells Excel, one company sells Google Sheet, One company sells Work, one company sells Google Docs, etc.

Is that what you want?

Re: Microsoft faces antitrust scrutiny from the EU over Teams, Office 365

#140

Post by 542458 »

EGreg wrote: post #128

I don’t get it. What are the worst things about Teams in your experience? It always worked reliably for me when I was on a team.

Search is pretty terrible, which is a big flaw when you’re trying to dig up old info.

Splitting chats with people and chats with teams into separate UIs just makes it hard to keep on top of things.

Image uploads and embeds work very inconsistently and often break for no apparent reason.

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