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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

#291

Post by ThunderSizzle »

manuelabeledo wrote: post #244
jowea wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Microsoft could get in trouble for bundling its own product (IE) on its own OS (Windows) then IMHO this can in fact be seen as abusing monopolistic market power in the search market to benefit in the browser market.

How is that even in the same category? Google does not force you to install Chrome in order to use Search.

Google does force me to use Android to use certain tools of theirs (eg manage their Google wifi pucks), as opposed to just using a local admin page like every other system.

Google owns Android.

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

#292

Post by jon-wood »

Conan_Kudo wrote: post #255
jon-wood wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have some sympathy here, mostly because Outlook's calendering is horrible. I also think most people don't exclusively use Outlook for their calendar, even in environments where your calendar there is meant to reflect your availability for meetings. I've never understood why neither Google or MS have the ability to give their calendar tool an ical feed and have the availability from that reflected in your corporate…

This is absolutely a feature in Google Calendar. Every calendar has an iCal feed you can pull in. You can enable it from your calendar settings.

They all support adding an iCal feed I can see. I want one that other people in the organisation can see the free/busy state from that gets merged with that from my work calendar.

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

#293

Post by eitland »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #209
pyrale wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

I tried it a number of times.

The tab close thing was the only thing that was significantly better on my machines,

... and if I really want to close a number of tabs quickly and without thinking I just right-click and chose "close tabs to the right/to the left/other tabs".

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

#294

Post by eitland »

sznio wrote: post #113
pyrale wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Chrome ate Firefox and IE back in the day because it was monumentally better, technologically speaking. The difference between Firefox and IE was orders of magnitude larger than the difference between Chrome and Firefox. The explosive growth from Chrome can't be explained just by it being better than competition, or Firefox would have replaced IE in 6 months earlier. The real explanation is that Chrome benefited fr…

Chrome was much much better than Firefox at the time, mainly because of V8. Firefox only got it's first JIT 9 months after Chrome. On my 2003 PC the difference was very noticeable. I switched instantly.

I tried a number of times.

I am one of those who can sense and get annoyed by a few tens of milliseconds lag and for me Linux is a massive UX improvement despite its font issues and alignment issues (actually I can't see them even when I try) because all the random lags from Windows are gone.

I never experienced any improvement on Chrome on any of my setups so I discarded it immediately because the extension API was so crippled right from the start it was mostly just glorified web sites, not actual extensions like on Firefox.

(At that time Firefox had full blown FTP clients implemented as Firefox extensions, and even Firebug [1] was just and extension, so going for a browser that only allowed canned websites as "extensions" for trivial performance gains wasn't an option.)

[1]: not the first such tool but I will argue it was so impressive that it became the inspiration for all later web developer tools in all browsers.

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

#295

Post by manuelabeledo »

ThunderSizzle wrote: post #291
manuelabeledo wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that even in the same category? Google does not force you to install Chrome in order to use Search.

Google does force me to use Android to use certain tools of theirs (eg manage their Google wifi pucks), as opposed to just using a local admin page like every other system. Google owns Android.

You could also use iOS.

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

#296

Post by eitland »

manuelabeledo wrote: post #244
jowea wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Microsoft could get in trouble for bundling its own product (IE) on its own OS (Windows) then IMHO this can in fact be seen as abusing monopolistic market power in the search market to benefit in the browser market.

How is that even in the same category? Google does not force you to install Chrome in order to use Search.

Here's the thkng you are missing:

Google, like Microsoft before them, pushes their own products in ways that no others are allowed to:

- Microsoft pre-bundled IE and Windows Media Player when no one else could bundle anything.

- Google pushed ads against Firefox and for Chrome on the front page of Google search (i.e. before a search was typed) something I am not aware if anyone neither humanitarian or commercial entities with the worlds largest marketing budgets being allowed to do.

For me, this example alone is enough to demonstrate behind reasonable doubt that Google, like Microsoft before them (and after them with Teams and Edge) have abused their position in one market to crush all competition in another market.

Everything else like the very convenient issues showing up in Firefox on major Google properties like Search, Calendar and YouTube is just icing on the cake.

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

#297

Post by eitland »

gerash wrote: post #243
eitland wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Do you think one should be able to advertise Macbook on microsoft.com page or a Pixel phone on apple.com ? how about a giant banner when you enter a Walmart store that reads "Just buy it on Amazon" ?

If you had to pass through Wall Mart drive through multiple times a day, would it be ok if they hassled you if you used anything but Walmart cars?

Is it OK when Microsoft force install Teams across every installed machine?

You have to realize google.com isn't just the corporate website of Google, it is their main product.

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

#298

Post by eitland »

somsak2 wrote: post #252
eitland wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Google+

Seriously? Before any search was entered?

I'll take your word for it. Also it would just be another example that Google tried to enter social media as well using this tactic.

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

#299

Post by eitland »

Version467 wrote: post #186
photonerd wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speed is why I use Safari now. It feels like Chrome did compared to FF back in the day. It’s painful using Chrome by comparison. If it wasn’t for Chromes better dev tools I doubt I’d use it much

May I recommend Orion? It's based on Safaris engine, but imo improves massively on its ui (for example it comes with a fantastic (opt-in) tree-style tab browser). But most importantly it supports chrome and firefox extensions. Most of them do just work out of the box.

Orion is fantastic.

I still use Firefox since it is cross browser but if I change to MacBook as my dev machine I might go all in on Orion as well.

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

#300

Post by eitland »

yomlica8 wrote: post #105
kevingadd wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how massive the impact of "bundle a bunch of proprietary stuff into our open browser" was on the browser wars. Between H264, MP3, Flash and PDF, Firefox never had a chance.

I can't remember firefox ever being included in installers for flash updates, antivirus, etc with install by default checked either. Perhaps Chrome did succeed mostly on its own merits, but it wasn't above techniques used by things like Bonzai Buddy and Ask Toolbar to get the job done.

To top it, it could be argued that Chrome is a worse piece of spyware than Bonzi Buddy ever was.

You don't put a single character into the address bar of Chrome without notifying Google.

Yes, even if you are typing a domain instead of planning to search for something you have told Google about it, which means they know everything you visit, both internal websites at work and everything else.

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