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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

#201

Post by hotshiitake »

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…

> And a chat app is very much not out of place in an office productivity suite. I have to say, I don't understand the merits of this case at all.

The article talks about M365/O365, but I suspect the bigger issue might be that Microsoft includes Teams Personal (WebView) in Windows 11. From what I understand this version will eventually reach feature parity with Teams for Work & School (Electron)

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/microsoft-teams-version...

It's not clear to me if Teams Personal will be kept as a separate app, or if the new features will just be subscription-gated from that version. Either way I can see why competitors and regulators might be a bit concerned about it.

Side note - I really hate Microsoft's product naming. Finding resources about all these different versions of Teams is such a pain, not to mention how confusing it is for end users.

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

#202

Post by manuelabeledo »

eitland wrote: post #38
veave wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"massive ad campaigns" is hardly an antitrust matter. Chrome ate Firefox and IE back in the day because it was monumentally better, technologically speaking.

Who else has been allowed to advertise on the front page of Google? None as far as I am aware of. Not even - again AFAIK - disaster relief after the biggest disasters we have seen after Google was founded. I'd argue that is quite clearly the same league as Microsoft pre-installing Media Player and Internet Explorer: taking advantage of a niche that they completely dominates and abusing it to wedge their way into anot…

Are you complaining about Google advertising its own products on their own websites?

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

#203

Post by impendia »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #164
reaperducer wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outlook, in contrast, pushes its calendaring features I've never understood Outlook being both email and calendar. Does no one at Microsoft ever want to read an email and reference their calendar at the same time, or vice versa?

No, people at Microsoft just didn't realize most users forgot how to work with multiple windows. You can have a separate calendar window if you care for it, you can even read individual e-mails in separate windows (that one is annoyingly bound to double-click...). That works on the web too - at least for people realizing you can have the same app open in two tabs, and then break them out into separate browser windows…

My attitude -- and I acknowledge that this comes from a place of privilege -- is that I don't care to share my calendar with my employer.

I'm a university professor; there's always pressure to join this or that initiative, to participate in more committees, and the like. But in the long term, success depends on maintaining much of my focus on my long-term research goals, which means saying no a lot.

PG wrote about "makers' schedules vs managers' schedules"

http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

and this feels similar to me. Outlook feels designed around the manager's schedule.

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

#204

Post by zokier »

kwanbix wrote: post #189
zokier wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rules change if company is found to have dominant position on the market. Its not rocket science, nor is it matter of opinion.

So you say that they can include Edge but not Teams? What is the difference?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrowserChoice.eu

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

#205

Post by matwood »

bob1029 wrote: post #134
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.

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.

I'm managed GSuite and Slack in a small company for years. What is taking so much of your time?

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

#206

Post by CSMastermind »

selykg wrote: post #196
CSMastermind wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If you liked Screenhero you might like Pop https://pop.com/home > In 2013, I co-founded Screenhero, an app that enabled remote pair programming and made developer collaboration over the internet “better than being in the same room” (to quote our old slogan). https://pop.com/screenhero

Oh very cool, will try it out.

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

#207

Post by matwood »

LegitShady wrote: post #171
Neil44 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the rest of the MS ecosystem is full of dark patterns to funnel you onto it also. Create a new meeting in Outlook - there's automatically a Teams link in it that nobody asked for. Even if it's a Zoom meeting.

We have teams and zoom. My outlook has three different buttons - new zoom meeting, new teams meeting, and new meeting. Maybe your system admins just suck?

The default in Outlook when creating a meeting is to add a Teams meeting link. You can turn it off in settings (maybe for the whole org?).

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

#208

Post by smcleod »

skrause wrote: post #28

My employer is a prime example for this case: We use Microsoft 365 because we need Microsoft Office and use their email hosting. And then we use Teams simply because it's already included in the package anyway, even though many employees hate it, but it's hard to argue for another solution because why pay for Slack when we already have Teams "for free"? And since Teams doesn't really need to compete on functionality…

This is the case with all of the management led (as opposed to technology led) clients I’ve worked with over the past 2-3 years. Pretty much everyone hates teams with a passion - even many of the managers now, but they’re forced to use it because the business gets it bundled with office365. Thankfully all of the technical teams I’ve worked with only use it for video calls and use Slack (not that it’s perfect) for all chat, bots and huddles.

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

#209

Post by Quarrelsome »

pyrale wrote: post #182
Quarrelsome wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're forgetting some of the key benefits: * auto-updates when firefox was still: HELLO WEDNESDAY'S VERSION HAS DROPPED WOULD U LIKE TO DOWNLOAD IT? * tabs were isolated per process where an entire Firefox session could still get taken down by one tab not responding * That super sexy tab handling code where the resizing happened when you clicked away meaning you could close multiple tabs by simply clicking a…

You seem to be missing the point. My point is that being incredibly more advanced than the incumbent browser was simply not enough to have a great adoption, as evidenced by FF or Opera's market progression before Chrome's introduction. People who make that claim in 2023 simply ignore how important Google's advertising was in securing Chrome's position.

Forgive me, as I also feel compelled to start with a mandatory posturing statement that adds nothing to the conversation.

Now that's done with; I would also suggest that given how much better Chrome was at the time than any other browser that much of its adoption was organic. At the time of its release Google still had a considerable amount of good will from the tech public. I was certainly telling anyone willing to listen at that time to install Chrome because of genuinely good it was.

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

#210

Post by falsenapkin »

skrause wrote: post #28

My employer is a prime example for this case: We use Microsoft 365 because we need Microsoft Office and use their email hosting. And then we use Teams simply because it's already included in the package anyway, even though many employees hate it, but it's hard to argue for another solution because why pay for Slack when we already have Teams "for free"? And since Teams doesn't really need to compete on functionality…

My company also killed Slack when Teams became bundled. With some bureaucracy and a written exception you can continue to use Slack if you're a "developer" which is like ?? but I'm not complaining because the code blocks and screen sharing on Teams are actual garbage so good to have an alternative.

What an awful experience, both the app and the forced move. The only people who like it are warm bodies who can barely use other Office products as it is.

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