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An Economy of Godzillas: Salesforce, Slack, and Microsoft

mattstoller.substack.com

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Re: An Economy of Godzillas: Salesforce, Slack, and Microsoft

#41

Post by chii »

cafed00d wrote: post #9

> it gave away its new product for no or low cost to existing clients, and bundled it with existing product lines. In a society with functional antitrust laws, such activity would be illegal. But alas. I find this statement highly suspect. What kind of world do we want to live in where regulators delineate product areas. I see Microsoft integrating Teams into their productivity product bundle as feature; not a bug. O…

> we run the risk of creating separate product areas and none of them working well together

or, have mandated open apis that _force_ products to integrate.

That's what the web is today (mostly). Links, and embedable content (like frames). APIs and data.

The reason companies don't do this - as demonstrated fairly recently by google with their removal of xmpp protocols from google chat - is that open apis prevent lock. Open apis allows others to compete, and it is not in the interest of the existing incumbent.

IBM made a crucial mistake that apple didn't make when IBM opened the specs for their IBM compatible machines and drove down the price of PCs to what you see today - otherwise, i would predict that PCs would be just as expensive and incompatible as apple computers were.

Re: An Economy of Godzillas: Salesforce, Slack, and Microsoft

#42

Post by a_imho »

em500 wrote: post #29
shp0ngle wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea how that happened, but one day, I found Teams suddenly automatically installed on my spouses computer; and not only auto-installed, but it auto-started on Windows start. How? Why? It was probably bundled with Office and/or Windows. MS got news-breaking fine for far less with Netscape before. But, nobody cares in 2020.

It should be well known by now that if you're running Windows 10, Microsoft is your system administrator, and can control (at least technically) exactly what runs on your computer. Unless maybe if you really put time/effort into stopping that (if it's still possible at all). This is not meant to be judgemental. I'm actually of the opinion this is better in general than leaving sysadmin duties to the general public, w…

We know what happens, the question is why is it allowed?

Re: An Economy of Godzillas: Salesforce, Slack, and Microsoft

#43

Post by geofft »

a_imho wrote: post #42
em500 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be well known by now that if you're running Windows 10, Microsoft is your system administrator, and can control (at least technically) exactly what runs on your computer. Unless maybe if you really put time/effort into stopping that (if it's still possible at all). This is not meant to be judgemental. I'm actually of the opinion this is better in general than leaving sysadmin duties to the general public, w…

We know what happens, the question is why is it allowed?

Because a bunch of people believe as a matter of ideology that Microsoft has the fundamental liberty to be your system administrator and that, in a free society, regulators can't so much as think about doing something about it. See the top of the thread.

Re: An Economy of Godzillas: Salesforce, Slack, and Microsoft

#44

Post by dustingetz »

cafed00d wrote: post #9

> it gave away its new product for no or low cost to existing clients, and bundled it with existing product lines. In a society with functional antitrust laws, such activity would be illegal. But alas. I find this statement highly suspect. What kind of world do we want to live in where regulators delineate product areas. I see Microsoft integrating Teams into their productivity product bundle as feature; not a bug. O…

the reason they don’t integrate well is it’s not in their interests, having already consumed global markets they are out of growth and need to own the whole ecosystem to grow. imagine if Peco electricity only worked with Peco houses.

Re: An Economy of Godzillas: Salesforce, Slack, and Microsoft

#45

Post by lucideer »

cafed00d wrote: post #9

> it gave away its new product for no or low cost to existing clients, and bundled it with existing product lines. In a society with functional antitrust laws, such activity would be illegal. But alas. I find this statement highly suspect. What kind of world do we want to live in where regulators delineate product areas. I see Microsoft integrating Teams into their productivity product bundle as feature; not a bug. O…

> What kind of world do we want to live in where regulators delineate product areas.

I'd love to try living in this world. What are the downsides you see?

Re: An Economy of Godzillas: Salesforce, Slack, and Microsoft

#46

Post by abhinav22 »

chii wrote: post #41
cafed00d wrote: post #9

> it gave away its new product for no or low cost to existing clients, and bundled it with existing product lines. In a society with functional antitrust laws, such activity would be illegal. But alas. I find this statement highly suspect. What kind of world do we want to live in where regulators delineate product areas. I see Microsoft integrating Teams into their productivity product bundle as feature; not a bug. O…

> we run the risk of creating separate product areas and none of them working well together or, have mandated open apis that _force_ products to integrate. That's what the web is today (mostly). Links, and embedable content (like frames). APIs and data. The reason companies don't do this - as demonstrated fairly recently by google with their removal of xmpp protocols from google chat - is that open apis prevent lock.…

Agree wholeheartedly although maybe not on the IBM part. But all these big tech firms are really closing up technology and avoiding open apis and competition with other players.

Re: An Economy of Godzillas: Salesforce, Slack, and Microsoft

#47

Post by addicted »

cafed00d wrote: post #9

> it gave away its new product for no or low cost to existing clients, and bundled it with existing product lines. In a society with functional antitrust laws, such activity would be illegal. But alas. I find this statement highly suspect. What kind of world do we want to live in where regulators delineate product areas. I see Microsoft integrating Teams into their productivity product bundle as feature; not a bug. O…

I am not the biggest supporter of MS’s anti competitive nature.

But I find the complaints against Teams to be suspect. Primarily because Teams is not adding anything new to the MS office bundle. It’s a slightly better replacement (arguably!) for Skype.

There’s barely a feature in MS Teams that isn’t, at best, an enhancement on what MS was already delivering within Skype.

Re: An Economy of Godzillas: Salesforce, Slack, and Microsoft

#48

Post by addicted »

Gravityloss wrote: post #28
cafed00d wrote: post #9

> it gave away its new product for no or low cost to existing clients, and bundled it with existing product lines. In a society with functional antitrust laws, such activity would be illegal. But alas. I find this statement highly suspect. What kind of world do we want to live in where regulators delineate product areas. I see Microsoft integrating Teams into their productivity product bundle as feature; not a bug. O…

Many people using Outlook run Teams meetings, because it's just one button click away in Outlook. Compare to others where you have to go to a different tool and create a meeting and copy-paste a link. The antitrust way would be to have Outlook have buttons for a lot of different meeting services out of the box. Many don't require installing any software (Google meet for example). It's all just API:s.

Anyone can build a 1 click experience similar to the Teams add-in for outlook.

Re: An Economy of Godzillas: Salesforce, Slack, and Microsoft

#49

Post by silon42 »

chii wrote: post #41
cafed00d wrote: post #9

> it gave away its new product for no or low cost to existing clients, and bundled it with existing product lines. In a society with functional antitrust laws, such activity would be illegal. But alas. I find this statement highly suspect. What kind of world do we want to live in where regulators delineate product areas. I see Microsoft integrating Teams into their productivity product bundle as feature; not a bug. O…

> we run the risk of creating separate product areas and none of them working well together or, have mandated open apis that _force_ products to integrate. That's what the web is today (mostly). Links, and embedable content (like frames). APIs and data. The reason companies don't do this - as demonstrated fairly recently by google with their removal of xmpp protocols from google chat - is that open apis prevent lock.…

Not apis, protocols preferably.

Re: An Economy of Godzillas: Salesforce, Slack, and Microsoft

#50

Post by pjc50 »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #22
pjc50 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more integration, the less competition. The software competitive scene is fairly good at the moment, and the open web remains an escape hatch, but the risk of too tight integration is that startups become impossible.

> The software competitive scene is fairly good at the moment, and the open web remains an escape hatch Can't agree really. On the operating system front, it's Linux-only at this point. And the "Linux community" has completed its long way to the dark side, with RedHat paying devs to subvert the portability Unix/POSIX has always stood for, with systemd and the rush to containers. For a perspective, consider Docker was…

> On the operating system front, it's Linux-only at this point

A GPL'd system available entirely for free is hardly a "monopoly", though. And this only applies to servers, Linux desktops are rare and phones are split between the free-ish Android (with critical non-free Google Play Services) and the entirely locked down iOS.

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