[HN Gopher] Microsoft breached antitrust rules by bundling Teams...
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Microsoft breached antitrust rules by bundling Teams and Office, EU
says
Author : cbg0
Score : 313 points
Date : 2024-06-25 10:21 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (apnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (apnews.com)
| chucke1992 wrote:
| Maybe if Slack offered proper video conferencing tools it would
| not complain. Should ask Zoom for advice.
| mrweasel wrote:
| It think that one of the issues in this case. Teams rather
| terrible, but so is everything else.
|
| I worked for a company that used Google Chat internally and
| we'd use Teams with some clients. People kept telling me how
| much better Slack is, but now that I work for a company that
| does have Slack, I can't say that it's any better. In fact I'd
| probably rank Google Chat highest of those three options.
|
| Microsoft is giving people free replacement that is in some
| ways better (but with a worse interface). There's no point in
| NOT using Teams, when it's at least no much worse. In the same
| way where people are using Google Chat, or whatever it's called
| now, because they use GSuite / Google Workplace and the
| integration is really good. Teams just needs to be cheaper than
| Slack, unless Slack massively overhauls everything.
| chucke1992 wrote:
| the problem is that EU basically wants Teams to be more
| expensive so that Slack will become cheaper and thus more
| attractive.
|
| It is hilarious that Slack still has not been able to
| introduce proper video calls while introducing relatively
| useless integrations.
| barryrandall wrote:
| Or, like, people could just use both. I realize that means
| running yet another instance of Chrome, but it's 2024. Even
| Macs can multitask.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Why is it okay for Office to include Word, Excel, or PowerPoint
| but _not_ a chat application? Does the EU get to decide what is
| reasonably considered part of a productivity suite? Or is the
| only requirement that a competitor complains?
|
| This sure seems to say it's illegal to bundle any products
| together if a competitor for one of the products complains about
| it.
| kevsamuel wrote:
| Legality is not science, most of the time, the definition of
| what's wrong is blurry and humans have to debate about it.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Laws shouldn't be written without clear lines - how can a
| person who wants to avoid breaking the law do that if we have
| an ever growing list of laws full of gray area and blurry
| lines?
| snowpid wrote:
| does this concern your everyday life?
| _heimdall wrote:
| Blurry lines and gray areas in law? Absolutely, I'd
| rather not accidentally break a law that is only defined
| after the fact in court.
| snowpid wrote:
| No do you have real problems with blurry laws in your
| country? (If so is this country in the EU?)
| _heimdall wrote:
| This is a really strange way to attempt to silence my
| opinion.
|
| Yes I do have issues with blurry laws. My current country
| is not in the EU, though until recently I was a resident
| of an EU country also with blurry laws. Am I allowed to
| have an opinion now?
| snowpid wrote:
| For me it's sounds like a made up problem.
|
| Again, most laws are blurry in a mathematical sense. This
| is the case since laws existed. And so and to a surprise
| for some HN people, we usually don't break them all day.
|
| DMA is actually precise and rooted in competitions
| challenges all known. (E.g. the slack case was discussed
| very often) Complaining about the DMA is very strange.
| Also DMA targets big corpos, so needing a lawyer to
| understand all implications is again a none - issue.
| davidgerard wrote:
| > This is a really strange way to attempt to silence my
| opinion.
|
| It's that your replies in this thread show a complete
| lack of understanding and a refusal to take in multiple
| people patiently explaining to you.
|
| Apart from your bizarre posture that calling out your low
| quality posting constitutes "silencing" you.
| _heimdall wrote:
| The GP comment I was referring to asked where I live with
| no other context. The implication there is that my having
| an opinion, or at least sharing it, is somehow gated by
| whether I'm currently living in the EU.
|
| We may have different interpretations of the law, or
| different opinions on what we think the laws should be,
| but that doesn't mean I am bizarrely posturing with no
| understanding of the law.
| immibis wrote:
| In corporate antitrust law, specifically. Nobody is going
| to jail over this. They might just have to change the
| sales terms. Is this so terrible?
| anon373839 wrote:
| You're going to be very unhappy when you learn what common
| law is. The law that decides a case is written after the
| fact. (Yes, retroactively!)
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| You're not supposed to. The state is always supposed to
| have a treasure trove of possible crimes they can smack you
| with.
| immibis wrote:
| If you're a big company and the penalty is only a fine...
| there is not much need to be absolutely sure you don't
| break the law. It is just another risk, like the risk of a
| data center catching on fire, that is to be managed, not
| avoided at all costs. Law for you and me means someone
| might go to jail and that's worth avoiding all costs, but
| for a company it just means spending more money or
| receiving less.
|
| Cases are also more unique. People get murdered "routinely"
| so everyone has figured out the clear lines. Antitrust
| doesn't happen as often and each case is unique.
|
| Are you hoping for a world where corporations can find
| loopholes and it's impossible to punish them for exploiting
| the loopholes because we can only execute the law strictly
| like a computer program? Even ethereum smart contracts can
| be overturned - it happened once.
| gklitz wrote:
| Don't know what's hard to understand there? Microsoft didn't
| have a chat product (worth anything, Skype was a mountain of
| crap). Slack comes along and builds a great product, Microsoft
| goes "oh, the office suite now includes teams!" So everyone
| gets it "for free" if they have the office suite, murdering
| slack in the market. And of cause everyone will have to pay for
| Teams as the price of the office package rises to I cover the
| costs, no free lunch and all that.
|
| It had been a different story if Teams had always been a part
| of office, and slack came along and tried to compete. But come
| on this is a 100% clear cut abuse of a monopoly on windows
| office programs by Microsoft abused to outcompete a competitor
| that they couldn't fight honestly.
| _heimdall wrote:
| So the legal line is that once a company is successful in
| bundling and selling products the bundle is locked and can
| never be added to? That seems unreasonable to me, and I
| generally am pretty hard on monopolistic issues.
|
| Edit: wouldn't this mean that Apple could never have added a
| preinstalled app to the iPhone after the phones became
| successful?
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| If success is near total domination then yes?
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| No, it's just that you can't use dominance in one market to
| privilege yourself in another. Basically cross promotion
| and bundling are looked at very sceptically once you get
| large enough.
| chucke1992 wrote:
| slack murdered itself from the market by not delivering good
| video conferencing solution. Zoom succeeded immensely and it
| was not bundled with any office suite.
|
| And the hilarious part is that Slack is still crap in regards
| of video calls.
| rlpb wrote:
| A friend told me about how his workplace have switched from
| Zoom to Teams for video calls because they use Office and Teams
| is now bundled with Office so they don't have to pay extra for
| Zoom.
|
| > This sure seems to say it's illegal to bundle any products
| together if a competitor for one of the products complains
| about it.
|
| It's not bundling itself that's the issue. The use of one
| market to encroach on another is what's considered unfair
| competition. The fact that a competitor exists that just does
| one part of it is what makes the case that the two markets are
| separate.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Once car manufacturers started including bluetooth support
| they were incroaching on the aftermarket headunit market in a
| similar way. Was that actually illegal?
| rlpb wrote:
| This is far from a novel question. There is extensive
| statute and case law in this area across many
| jurisdictions. You could start at
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_law
| _heimdall wrote:
| Sure, I'm well aware of antitrust laws, the Sherman Act,
| etc. If you want to look at it from that angle, what are
| the consumer concerns being violates by Teams being
| bundled and potentially replacing Zoom that was
| previously used? Teams isn't forced on Office users and
| Zoom isn't prevented, consumers still can choose.
| rlpb wrote:
| Again, the answer to your question is well established.
| Linked from the page I linked you previously:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce)
|
| """ The company doing this bundling may have a
| significantly large market share so that it may impose
| the tie on consumers, despite the forces of market
| competition. The tie may also harm other companies in the
| market for the tied good, or who sell only single
| components.
|
| One effect of tying can be that low quality products
| achieve a higher market share than would otherwise be the
| case. """
|
| > ...Zoom isn't prevented, consumers still can choose.
|
| Only until Zoom fails because consumers who would have
| otherwise used Zoom were forced to pay for Teams instead
| because the price for Teams was bundled into the price
| for Office. At least, that's the argument.
|
| To be clear, I'm not myself arguing either way. But the
| reason for the case is clear and it is disingenuous to
| pretend that it doesn't exist.
| rdtsc wrote:
| Until everyone ends up getting a free Teams add-on, Zoom
| is driven out of business, and then Teams becomes a
| $19.99 a month per user service.
|
| If a new competitor appears, the price drops again until
| they are driven away, then goes back up.
|
| So initially it might be great for consumers because
| there is competition and there are choices. But it's
| heading in the direction where consumers will be harmed.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| In the realm of enterprise software, users aren't the
| "consumer" anyway. It's whatever executive has buying
| power to mandate what software is used by the org.
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| Some gas stations give you a free car wash with a fill-up
| (using their market to encroach on another). That doesn't
| mean the standalone car wash down the street has a case.
|
| This isn't about consumer protection. This is about petty
| people still trying to "get" Microsoft after 30 years, it's
| all so tiresome.
| 255kb wrote:
| Law is not working like that. We are talking about antitrust
| laws which have specific criterias to evaluate if a company is
| dominant on a market and is abusing this position or not. All
| these criterias must be evaluated for each case.
|
| There are many steps involved: - identifying the relevant
| markets, probably something like office applications market and
| chat applications market. - whether the company has a dominant
| position on one (likely MS being dominant on the office apps
| market) - checking if a specific action could be considered as
| a abuse of dominant position, restricting the competition. Here
| it would be MS bundling the app, giving them an unfair
| advantage on the chat apps market.
|
| They would likely be to assess the real damages to the market,
| whether or not competitors were able to do business or not,
| etc.
|
| It's not all black or white, like any legal subject.
| olivierduval wrote:
| Teams is deeply integrated with Office (including OneDrive for
| file storage/sharing, Outlook for meetings), more than any
| other Chat App... I guess it's a good thing in general but it's
| also an unfair competitive advantage (using "priviledged API" I
| think)
| octocop wrote:
| EU keeps on delivering today!
| echelon wrote:
| Defaults and bundling are inherently unfair.
|
| Chrome shouldn't be bundled with Android. Google search
| shouldn't be the default. Google Wallet / Google Pay shouldn't
| be the default.
|
| Same for Apple and Microsoft.
|
| Apple Cash shouldn't be the default in Messages, ... the list
| goes on and on.
|
| Platform providers can easily attack businesses outside of
| their core business by setting defaults. They use these
| synergies to wield unfair power over hundreds of markets.
|
| Don't even get me started on how you now have to pay to protect
| your brand name in search across these platforms. The fact that
| you might appear fourth in search for your own brand name in
| the App Store or on Google is absurd.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| The browser is a tricky one. It is the chicken that lays the
| rest of the eggs.
|
| I'm not going to tell my mom how to curl a copy of Brave onto
| her machine because no browser was provided.
| Nathanba wrote:
| yes, would be unfair towards all the other http tools that
| arent curl if you bundle it
| gambiting wrote:
| No one is getting a competitive advantage by bundling
| curl, which is the entire point of this argument.
| Vuska wrote:
| Except for curl, which now has more users familar with it
| than say wget or aria2.
| abduhl wrote:
| That's exactly what Microsoft would say about Teams
| though, so it's probably better that we err on the side
| of caution and ban curl bundling. At least until curl can
| prove that it's not anti-competitive.
| kogir wrote:
| wget begs to differ.
|
| Kidding aside, where exactly does it end? How do you
| consider when you've hit "too much" and how many pieces
| must be split out when you do? Should every product in
| the Office suite be offered only individually?
| crazygringo wrote:
| Indeed, a lot of people don't remember but back when
| spell checking was a new thing, there was genuine concern
| over whether bundling it with word processors was
| anticompetitive.
|
| Or if Word and WordPerfect should be sold without spell
| checkers, and they'd need to interoperate with third
| party ones.
| Teever wrote:
| What if we just make them bundle their competitors
| products if they want to buy dle their own?
|
| That means that Firefox nextcloud and bitwarden are
| installed by default on windows/macs
| ThalesX wrote:
| What about my startup nextercloud? Why am I being
| discriminated against!?
| Teever wrote:
| Be sure the goal isn't to get every alternative there,
| just enough to stop the unfair advantage of bundling and
| to make a healthier market.
| ThalesX wrote:
| Well, I feel like Nextercould(tm) is the key to a
| healthier market and stopping the unfair bundling of
| Nextcloud with major OS releases.
| Teever wrote:
| Well pass that info along to the regulator who can
| actually make binding decisions regarding this matter.
| frereubu wrote:
| I find these kinds of rhetorical "where exactly does it
| end" comments really limp. Life is full of choices where
| there are grey areas. Lay out a bunch of desirable
| criteria - like not allowing a single entity to
| monopolise a market -then pick a starting point and
| iterate until you get a decent balance between the
| criteria. Sure it'll be a bit messy, but better than
| doing exactly nothing after throwing your hands up into
| the air and whinging about the fact that it's
| complicated.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I understand your frustration, but it's genuinely not
| that easy.
|
| You're right that there are a lot of gray areas in the
| law, where the two sides are clear but there's a blurry
| line. One famous example being, should Pringles be taxed
| as potato chips or as other chips? Because they're not
| fried slices of potatoes, they're a fried and shaped
| mixture of dried potatoes, corn flour, and rice flour.
| People think of them as potato chips, but they're not
| really. But it's still relatively straightforward to just
| draw a line _somewhere_.
|
| The problem with antitrust is that we don't really know
| how to define it at all. It's not just a single dimension
| like "is it a potato chip?" where there's just a single
| line. It's more like a blob with lots of dimensions where
| different reasonable completely just completely disagree
| on what the basic most important elements even _are_.
|
| > _Sure it 'll be a bit messy, but better than doing
| exactly nothing_
|
| That's where you're wrong. Badly applied antitrust law
| can actually be much worse than doing nothing.
|
| I'm not saying to give up. I'm just saying, it's not
| nearly as easy as you're making it sound. There are
| _really smart_ people who research antitrust and try to
| come up with recommendations, and they have profound
| disagreements with each other. The problem is actually a
| _lot_ harder than you seem to think it is.
| oaiey wrote:
| Browsers are particularly tricky because they are also a
| software development platform which needs to be reliable as
| the OS is. In some browsers like ChromeOS they are even the
| primary one.
| petesergeant wrote:
| > The browser is a tricky one
|
| Maybe, but they already solved that once already
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrowserChoice.eu
| josefx wrote:
| Chrome on Android is a completely different issue. It isn't
| that Android comes with Chrome or any other browser by
| default. It is that Googles PlayStore licensing outright
| allows Google to retroactively brick any phone by a
| manufacturer that fails to make the official Google Chrome
| binary the default browser on all of its Android phones. It
| is the reason Amazon had a hard time getting its Kindle
| productline of the ground since any manufacturer operating
| in the west was already bound by this shitshow of a
| license.
| Krssst wrote:
| On another hand, Android respects the user choice of
| browser. I have not seen it forcefully start Chrome on me
| once I set Firefox as default.
|
| I cannot say the same for Windows and Edge. Teams open
| links by default in Edge regardless of OS settings as far
| as I know (but it can be adjusted in Teams settings).
| Searching from the start menu also opens Edge and Bing
| rather than my choice of browser and search engine.
| Mashimo wrote:
| > Google search shouldn't be the default.
|
| At least for me, chrome was asking me last week what search
| engine I want to use. Made me switch to duckduckgo.
| Vespasian wrote:
| yeah me to.
|
| The DSA and the DMA doing what they are designed to do (in
| Europe)
|
| It's unfortunate that the regulators and legislators will
| have to fight over every one of those services individually
| for a while until mega corps get tired of their games and
| retreat to making train- instead of boat loads of money.
| outside1234 wrote:
| This isn't going to stop anything. It is just going to result
| in bribes to the countries and some small to Microsoft fine.
| threeseed wrote:
| You could make this argument about any bundling.
|
| All of the 365 products as well as similar from Adobe etc have
| been bundled in ways to lock out competition. Even Spotify is
| planning to.
|
| At some point EU needs to bring clarity to their competition laws
| and decide what they want the landscape to look like. Because
| right now they are just making up the rules as they go.
| Arainach wrote:
| It's legal to bundle products. It's not legal to use a monopoly
| in one area to leverage your way into another market.
| LordKeren wrote:
| I will be the last person to ever say Adobe is above criticism,
| but until Adobe creates an entire AdobeOS, I'm not sure they're
| in the same league as MS here
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Bundling is illegal in the EU if it used to abuse a dominant
| market position in one market to gain a competitive advantage
| in another.
|
| So what Adobe does, or what Spotify wants to do by bundling
| their own products within the same market, is far from the
| level of bundling Teams with Office, which is bundling across
| markets and where Office is extremely dominant.
|
| I don't think the EU is just making up the rules here, there
| are rules and this case is far more egregious and more clearly
| in violation than the examples you gave.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| What do you mean by "making up the rules as they go"? Microsoft
| was found in breach of the Article 102 of the Treaty on the
| functioning of european union, which was last modified in 2007,
| and the article it infringed on abuse of dominant position was
| ratified in 2003. Furthermore, two other companies (one of
| which is american) complained to the european commission about
| Teams and only then an investigation was started
| NBJack wrote:
| Perhaps, but Adobe and Spotify aren't offering a operating
| system where this crap is bundled. Neither do those examples
| have a 72% market share of PCs.
|
| Microsoft basically gave Teams away to corporate customers.
| Now, couple this fact with how many manufactures include a pre-
| installed copy Office 365 on consumer devices, add in this
| automatically included Teams since 2019, and you have a nasty
| combination. Bonus: Microsoft gets to inflate its numbers on
| adoption.
|
| Finally, Adobe Creative Cloud has roughly 30 million
| subscribers. Spotify has about 213 million subscribers.
| Windows, in general, has about 1.3 billion users.
| Neil44 wrote:
| They don't just bundle it, they make it auto-start on screen on
| Windows machines whether you've got an account or not.
| jacobwilliamroy wrote:
| In Windows you can use the task manager to configure what
| programs are started with your computer.
| Matl wrote:
| What that has to do with the OS vendor adding programs there
| that the users did not?
| ssahoo wrote:
| Not a lot of people know and change that. The point is that
| they should not have autostarted without consent.
| dsalfdslfdsa wrote:
| Sounds like you don't have much experience with Windows and
| MS software.
|
| https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msteams/forum/all/why-
| do...
| jacobwilliamroy wrote:
| I administer a Windows domain at my job that I do 40 hours
| a week so your assessment of me is just wrong and also
| offensive.
|
| I just restarted one of the workstations with Teams startup
| enabled and Teams ran when the computer restarted. Then I
| tried disabling Teams startup in the task manager on the
| same workstation and then restarted the workstation, and
| Teams hasn't started. I checked the startup tab in the task
| manager and Teams is still disabled after the restart. It
| hasn't appeared in the task manager either. This is Windows
| 10 Pro, so the behavior might be different on different
| versions/editions of Windows. Also this behavior might be
| affected by updates. These machines automatically install
| updates every Saturday, so they're running the latest
| Windows 10. Even if the setting is reset on a future
| update, I can create a GPO to disable it or even a
| scheduled task if I'm not allowed to manage this computer
| at the domain level.
| bragh wrote:
| This is the thing: Windows admins praise Windows when
| they are running a completely different edition of
| Windows with different configurable behaviors. It looks a
| lot different for home users who almost certainly do not
| even know what a GPO is. And this also raises the
| suspicion of which exact Windows edition those admins are
| running on their home computer(s) and how they obtained
| the license for that...
| psunavy03 wrote:
| > It looks a lot different for home users who almost
| certainly do not even know what a GPO is.
|
| Sounds like the Windows version of saying "I don't
| understand why the whole world isn't running Linux."
| dsalfdslfdsa wrote:
| You haven't re-created the described problem - Teams sets
| itself to auto-start again after you start it yourself.
| After all, it's very reasonable that you might want to
| join the occasional Teams meeting but not want it running
| after every boot.
| Sakos wrote:
| I'm not sure if it's a particular version or environment
| that does this, but at the very least I can't replicate
| it on my home PC with Teams (personal). If I disable it
| in the task manager's autostart, it remains disabled if I
| start Teams. It won't even let me enable "Auto-start" in
| the Teams settings if it's disabled in the task manager.
| skywhopper wrote:
| lol, a GPO. Very reasonable solution for a home user.
| natoliniak wrote:
| not to mention that gp editor is disabled on non pro
| windows. i think there is some kind of a funky command
| line or registry hack to enable it. So yeah, I moved on
| from windows largely because of this force fed software.
| pndy wrote:
| Not sure about other people here but I really liked how
| autostart used to work in 7 and before - just drop a
| shortcut in the Start menu folder and you're done. In 10 at
| some point, in order to have 3rd party software launched at
| login I had to use task scheduler.
|
| Also, funny thing: clicking this link pushes me thru https:
| //login.microsoftonline.com/common/oauth2/v2.0/authori...(.
| ..) - feels like they're expecting me using Edge so they
| could log me in automatically with snatched MSA credentials
| BoppreH wrote:
| You can still do that, the folder is at:
| %appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup
|
| I have a few sshfs[1] mounts there.
|
| [1] https://github.com/winfsp/sshfs-win
| pndy wrote:
| I tried that path back then but it still didn't work for
| me - no program I tried to put there incl Windows ones
| was able to launch at the login. I had just entries in
| the task manager's startup page. Maybe something changed
| in 11 - dunno
| naikrovek wrote:
| I can guarantee you that the startup folder still works
| fine, but in some cases you must create the folder.
|
| Microsoft does not screw around with backwards
| compatibility. There are multiple ways to start
| applications on launch now, including the user or public
| user startup folder, registry entries, and via scheduled
| tasks.
| tgv wrote:
| Apart from the fact that most people don't have a clue, and
| it shouldn't even have started to begin with... how then? I
| can see e.g. Widgets in the task manager. How do I disable
| the service permanently from the task manager?
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| When I look at the task manager, I literally have a tab
| called startup. It has an entry for Microsoft Teams. I set
| it to disabled. Teams doesn't start at startup for me.
| phito wrote:
| Why do Windows users try so hard to keep defending their OS's
| shitty behaviors? It's always "you can disable it" (but it
| might come back automatically after an update), and when you
| can't disable it (one drive), it's "just don't use it".
| wvenable wrote:
| I think it's a bit overblown. I don't have OneDrive enabled
| or Teams on my personal device and it was easy and mostly
| forgettable. I haven't any issues with it coming back after
| an update or anything. Edge isn't my default browser
| either.
|
| I feel like people want Windows to be evil so they oversell
| the issues.
|
| That's not to say that Microsoft should be forgiven for
| their obvious over-promotion of internal products. They
| really need a strong hand to rein in all these departments
| with their own metrics and agendas.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I think the general principle people are operating out of
| is that: The USER should be the one deciding 1. what gets
| installed onto their computer, 2. what gets run on the
| computer and when, and 3. the configuration of their own
| system. The OS vendor should not be deciding these
| things, nor the manufacturer of the computer.
|
| It's not enough that we can just ignore or correct these
| things that are just happening on _our own_ computers
| without our consent. These things should not be happening
| to begin with.
| naikrovek wrote:
| > people want Windows to be evil so they oversell the
| issues.
|
| This, is it exactly.
|
| Microsoft makes some very bad decisions, do not get me
| wrong. I agree with you and I think this is the core of
| why people complain so vehemently about Microsoft.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| > I feel like people want Windows to be evil so they
| oversell the issues.
|
| This goes to explain a lot of reactions that Very Online
| people tend to have to things. There must be a villain
| and that villain must be irredeemable. Even when, as the
| Brits would say, "cock-up" is a more likely explanation
| than "conspiracy."
| RajT88 wrote:
| > I think it's a bit overblown.
|
| Indeed, they've been playing shenanigans with OneDrive,
| but you can actually uninstall it now easily. That didn't
| used to be the case. Yes, it gets re-installed, yes it
| now is auto-enabling itself, but hey - you can easily
| remove it now.
|
| I'm pretty sure I solved definitively the Teams autostart
| problem long ago, easily enough I can't recall what I
| did. It's not a problem for me, even on 'Home' machines.
| pompino wrote:
| Why are you so upset that people derive a lot of value from
| Windows? Enough that they want to keep using it, and defend
| it because they don't agree with the "everything is broken"
| meme.
| tolciho wrote:
| Because even if you don't touch Windows (or whatever
| mediocre malware Microsoft presently peddles) those folks
| come to you and say stuff like "skype won't start" and
| lo! it does not start, though after much clicking around
| and rebooting and trying the obvious things you discover
| that if you right-click and try "open with skype" on the
| skype icon then skype will start. That problem at some
| point disappeared as mysteriously as it appeared. Eh, who
| knows, it's Windows, and there's more science to reading
| tea leaves or goose entrails.
|
| Then after za'o decades of stories like the above (it is
| merely the most recent of many) one might wonder how does
| Microsoft with so many programmers and so much money
| produce such kusogeware? That continues to waste my time?
| programjames wrote:
| What? You shouldn't defend bad behaviour regardless of if
| you derive a lot of value from the same source. A good
| organization wants to be called out on shitty practices
| so they improve.
| xnorswap wrote:
| It auto-runs all the time.
|
| I've got a work laptop with a teams for the work domain which I
| want.
|
| There's also a completely different copy of teams, "Microsoft
| teams (Personal)" teams, which I have to close.
|
| Not just every boot, even after I close it manually, I still
| find it running constantly.
|
| I've no idea what triggers it, but it doesn't seem to obey any
| startup settings.
| Neil44 wrote:
| Ha, that's another thing that grinds my gears. Teams, Teams
| (Personal) Teams (new)... WTF people you're supposed to know
| what you're doing here.
| xnorswap wrote:
| It's as if they saw how badly they messed up the Lync ->
| "Skype for business" transition and thought, "Yeah let's
| try that again".
| SSLy wrote:
| Linq is a C# DSL for SQL. You must have been thinking
| about Lync.
| Semaphor wrote:
| It's not just a DSL, it's also the fluent API. Because
| one thing Microsoft loves more than money, is confusing
| people with their naming.
| anyonecancode wrote:
| They say that "naming things is hard," but tbh I think
| some people and orgs are just really bad at naming.
| Semaphor wrote:
| I can recommend "Totally made up conversations about
| choosing Entity Framework version numbers":
| https://blog.oneunicorn.com/2020/03/26/numbersarehard/
|
| ;)
| xnorswap wrote:
| Quite right, too much muscle memory got me typing the
| wrong word.
| 13of40 wrote:
| IMO, the thing that went wrong with Lync->SFB transition
| was they bought Skype based on the idea that they could
| do something to merge the code with Lync, but over a year
| or two found out that that the only value was in the
| Skype branding, and the code and architecture of it was a
| dumpster fire. While the whole org was distracted by
| that, Teams came along and showed them what a rewrite
| from the ground up could do.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Teams (Web) showed them.
|
| Teams (Windows, Old) showed them a rewrite from the
| ground up could still be a dumpster fire.
| RankingMember wrote:
| In my cynical frame of mind I imagine those execs then
| golden-parachuted off to Google and were responsible for
| the Google Pay, GPay, and Google Wallet debacle.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| I had a friend who worked high up at Lync before they
| were sold. Microsoft flew him out and threatened lawsuits
| to coerce them to sign and play ball.
|
| I was working at Microsoft during the switch to Skype for
| Business and the employees were dogfooding the beta.
| Terrible time to be alive.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Communicator -> Lync (after the computer system of a
| dystopian videogame?) -> Skype for Business (because
| everybody knew Skype, so let's make this completely
| unrelated thing) -> Teams.
|
| Every step was about as fucked-up as every other.
| freehorse wrote:
| The same goes for other office products too. For example,
| there is a business version of Outlook and a personal (?)
| version of it. They have the same name, the interface is
| similar enough to not be sure what you have, and the only
| reliable way to know is to check where you downloaded the
| installer from. Some business accounts apparently do not
| work with the personal version. Colleagues were just
| standing clueless as to why their company office accounts
| could not sync when they had to reinstall stuff on a
| computer.
|
| I don't understand why they keep doing this. I guess
| because the names are recognisable enough that they want
| them advertised as such for both use-cases, but it is
| confusing.
| skywhopper wrote:
| This trend in MS software is utterly embarrassing. Every
| time I see these icons I cannot believe someone approved
| this approach.
| RankingMember wrote:
| The "Teams (new)" is absurd. Have we not learned not to
| name things this way by now? I say this as someone as
| guilty as anyone of having created an iterative series of
| files with "Final_1.txt", "Final_2.txt", "Final_1-new.txt"
| suffixes in times of mental sketch-padding. I would never
| release a product into the wild with any of those in the
| title, though.
| sdwr wrote:
| "Teams v2 final final (real) skdhajah.exe"
| Sakos wrote:
| Tbh, I prefer the Teams (new) and Teams (classic) naming.
| It's infinitely better than the naming they were doing
| before, which is they were named the exact same in the
| menu, but were entirely different versions.
| queuebert wrote:
| I have the same problem on my Mac since installing Teams. Now
| Microsoft Update Manager starts every time I boot, even
| though it's not listed in the boot items. And it always shows
| that I have an update available ... to Microsoft Update
| Manager. It's a software ouroboros.
| FredPret wrote:
| I had the same thing.
|
| I forget the exact course of action, but from what I
| remember:
|
| - ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.microsoft.update.agent.plist
|
| - ~/Library/Application\ Support/Microsoft\ AU\ Daemon/
|
| - /Library/Application\ Support/Microsoft/MAU2.0/Microsoft\
| AutoUpdate.app
|
| Nuke all of that, though for the last one you may have to
| chmod 000 it.
|
| Then do a search for everything with Microsoft Update in it
| and delete that too.
|
| This process kind of reminds me of removing spyware
| infestations from Windows XP.
| schrodinger wrote:
| In case this is new to some people: you can run
| $ mdfind [thing]
|
| like $ mdfind microsoft
|
| from the command line and it was an ultra-fast search
| using the index that Spotlight search uses. It's great to
| find pesky files when trying to rid yourself of an app
| and can't figure out what's left.
|
| I usually pipe it into a text editor (mdfind 1password |
| subl), use my editor to put rm or so rm at the beginning
| of each one, then paste it into terminal to run. That
| lets me audit the files first as opposed to xargs but I'm
| sure there's a million ways--the point is mdfind can be
| useful.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Regardless of the software vendor, it's best to avoid Mac
| software for end users if the installer requires
| administrator privileges to run.
|
| If you can't drag and drop an end user application into the
| Applications folder and have it work, just find another
| option in the same software category.
|
| The exception would be system utilities that modify the OS.
|
| It's perfectly normal for those to require administrative
| permission to install.
| addandsubtract wrote:
| Oh, is that what my coworkers use when we get the "a user
| from outside your organization is waiting to join" message?
| luzojeda wrote:
| I thought I was going crazy. Glad to know I wasn't the only
| one going through the same annoying thing
| alphabeta2024 wrote:
| It fucking autoruns by default on my Linux machine and
| eventually the only way to prevent it from not auto-running
| is to remove it. I avoid teams now whenever possible and use
| a browser session if forced to use teams.
| lol768 wrote:
| For some bizarre reason, Microsoft Teams is the registered
| file association handler for *HTML* files on my (Linux)
| machine. I have no idea how on earth _that_ happened, but I
| do not think I did it.
| jhallenworld wrote:
| Rant on: I use it in-browser on Linux also: Microsoft's
| security system is horrendous. I have to log into Teams-
| based client meetings using incognito browser windows
| because Teams keeps getting into mystery login loops with
| regular windows. It was working for a while, but I needed
| to log into Intel for Altera FPGA information. Well Intel
| uses Microsoft Azure for identity management (I had to log
| into Microsoft to log into Intel). After I did this, I
| couldn't attend client meetings anymore. I'm pretty sure
| the root of the issue is that I have multiple Microsoft
| identities, and their security model does not handle this
| case well, or at least it's incomprehensible to me and I
| don't want to waste any more time on it. Now Microsoft also
| knows me via github which is screwing it up further. It
| tries to tie your identity to your phone number, but it
| will not allow multiple account on a single number. It's a
| nightmare. Oh yeah, Microsoft also insists on having me
| install a phone app for identity management, but it doesn't
| solve any issues (I can't log in) other than wasting my
| time. This is the only thing I have to use Microsoft for,
| and the experience sucks. F* Microsoft.
|
| Say what you will about Google, at least I never had these
| issues.
|
| Edit: I'm not the only who constantly has this issue, see:
| https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-
| teams/teams...
|
| https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msteams/forum/all/new-
| te...
| genewitch wrote:
| The state of louisiana has a similar issue with their
| domain servers - if you have an errant client somewhere,
| anywhere, that has the wrong password (or whatever their
| IDS thought was 'fishy',) you get locked out of your
| desktop in the office. for two years my wife had to call
| State I.T. every morning to get logged in. Her office
| locked so no need to log out until quittin time.
|
| i was never able to track down what device it was, we
| reformatted a couple of laptops, wiped a couple phones.
| matwood wrote:
| Teams is a dumpster fire that no one would pay for. But, now
| that's it's been free and rolled out everywhere, it's a little
| late for the government to step in.
| genewitch wrote:
| > Internet Explorer is a dumpster fire that no one would pay
| for. But, [because] it's free and rolled out everywhere, it's
| a little late for the government to step in.
| chucke1992 wrote:
| except this EU ruling has nothing to do with it being bundled
| with Windows
| isk517 wrote:
| 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 current resent
| that you attempt to force them.
| jhallenworld wrote:
| Surely they know all of this and yet have made the decision
| that they don't care about any goodwill.
| cafed00d wrote:
| How does one decide what constitutes "basic"? Is a password-
| manager a "basic" feature? If so, then is "Passwords.app"
| bundled by Microsoft into Windows an unfair advantage because
| of distribution when compared to "1Password.app"? Ok, then,
| can Microsoft make a button called "Passwords" in their
| "Settings.app" and that qualifies as a non-competitive
| "basic" "Settings" feature?
| hot_gril wrote:
| Basic to me means anything that doesn't shove itself in my
| face. It's not a basic feature of an OS to constantly nag
| you about using Office or IE. Not that I think Windows
| needs legal mandates, it's just a bad product that I'm
| never going to use again.
| isk517 wrote:
| Everything that came installed on vanilla Windows XP would
| pretty much work.
|
| By that standard I'm also including Internet Explore 8
| since that should be just sufficient enough to download a
| modern browser of the users choice. /s (but also a little
| bit serious)
| lmm wrote:
| 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.
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| Unfortunately, this doesn't feel true anymore, I have an
| enterprise version and it's still pushy with its news feed,
| bing, and other pre-installed stuff.
| cjk2 wrote:
| now get them for the local account thing, onedrive integration,
| privacy and all the other shit.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Seems a little odd given that they unbundled it in Europe.
| LordKeren wrote:
| Regulators likely decided it is worth it to create the
| precedent that they will be strictly examining Microsoft's
| future app releases
| dacryn wrote:
| that's what this is about, the EU warned MS to unbundle, and
| they are not impressed with how they have implemented it.
|
| Yes you can buy teams separate from office now, but MS is still
| clearly abusing their market dominance to force teams upon you
| (same about onedrive to be fair)
| jncfhnb wrote:
| The article is not clear to me. Is the complaint that
| Microsoft's changes were not sufficient? Or is the complain
| that Microsoft's behavior prior to the change is punishable
| now?
|
| The article states
|
| > The software giant unbundled Teams from Office in Europe
| last year in an attempt to address regulator concerns
|
| Which is a pretty generic statement that makes it hard to
| follow why they would be accused of bundling still
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| How so? I installed office on a computer the other day, and I
| had to jump through hoops to only install Excel (which is the
| only one I needed). By default it was installed and set to
| automatically start for all users.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| The article suggested that shouldn't be the case in Europe. I
| suspect it wasn't accurate
| flavius29663 wrote:
| I don't understand how Microsoft gets under fire so easily, but
| Google bundles everything in Android, and you can't even
| uninstall most of them (maps, gmail etc.). Same with iphones.
| This is regulatory tipping the balance.
| niek_pas wrote:
| Microsoft has an effective monopoly on business PCs. That may
| have something to do with it.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| You may have missed it, but Apple is definitely bumping heads
| with the EU right now.
|
| And what do you mean you can't uninstall google maps and gmail?
| Are you using a Pixel?
| izacus wrote:
| Google absolutely has come under fire for it and has to now
| show browser choice dialogs just like Microsoft in EU.
| Retric wrote:
| There's android phones sold without any Google Apps, read up on
| LineageOS.
|
| Also both Apple and Android have come under fire about this
| stuff.
| Vespasian wrote:
| Google was just forced to introduce mandatory choice screens
| for browser, and search engines on android.
|
| The DMA also forces them to make all of these apps
| uninstallable.
| pif wrote:
| You'd expect them to have learnt the lesson with Internet
| Explorer but, as someone said, there is no way a man will
| understand something when his salary depends on him not
| understanding it!
| LordKeren wrote:
| The Internet Explorer lawsuit was also 20 years ago
| wccrawford wrote:
| And other companies have gotten away with bundling a lot of
| stuff since then. I could see why they think maybe the same
| ruling wouldn't happen today.
| rekoil wrote:
| There was no framework for fining them, each case would
| have to be handled separately, now there is such a
| framework in the DMA and DSA, which greatly simplifies the
| regulators jobs.
|
| I suspect that many other players are about to see such
| charges against them.
| red_trumpet wrote:
| You sure? From the article:
|
| > In 2009 Microsoft was also forced to implement a browser
| ballot box in its Windows operating system to ensure users
| were presented with a choice of web browsers, after years of
| Microsoft bunding Internet Explorer with Windows. Microsoft
| was then fined $730 million in 2013 for failing to include
| the browser ballot in Windows 7 SP1.
|
| That is 15 years at most, and 11 years for the most recent
| incident.
| LordKeren wrote:
| Yes, the lawsuit closed in 2001
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_
| C....
| imadj wrote:
| It's true that the US lawsuit was in 2001, but the EU
| antitrust fine (the discussion subject here) for failing
| to comply with offering a browsers ballot screen was in
| 2013[1], merely 11 years ago.
|
| Roughly the same crew still running the show, it didn't
| slip through their mind, just the $732 million fine
| wasn't enough to deter them from doing it again
|
| [1]- https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/technology/eu-
| fines-micro...
| GardenLetter27 wrote:
| What lesson though? A slap on the wrist?
| oaiey wrote:
| Modern productivity experiences in Microsoft 365 and Google
| Workspace are something very different than just invading
| another market and killing the market leader there. The Teams
| use case as shown a high degree of integration with the rest of
| the Microsoft 365 platform which was not comparable to IE.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| They probably did learn their lesson -- even if we get fined
| we'll still profit so we will still do what we want.
|
| Fine the C-suite n years of total income (including unrealised
| income).
| endisneigh wrote:
| Soon the EU will charge parents for giving their children undue
| advantages as well.
|
| In all seriousness - giving yourself an advantage is obviously
| what all companies want to do.
|
| Why doesn't the EU just, for each company, say exactly what they
| want? I honestly don't understand the EU - they don't want any
| company to do anything to have an advantage compared to their
| competitors?
|
| Seems like an exercise in mediocrity. I guess par for the course
| given all of the EUs top companies were all started last century.
| Clearly out of touch.
|
| Edit: wow the top 15 EU companies by revenue are utilities or
| auto.
| quonn wrote:
| All EU countries indeed have systems in place to limit undue
| advantages that any child can have (it's called a public
| education system and social security and later in life just
| "the law").
|
| As for anti-trust issues, you clearly don't understand them.
| endisneigh wrote:
| You're correct. I am not an expert on anti trust, but I do
| see that the EU has missed the boat on every new industry in
| the 21st century compared to the USA.
|
| We will see in 100 years if regulation was the right move or
| not.
|
| As for education - I doubt all public education in the EU is
| equivalent, or tutoring is banned, or additional resources,
| etc.
| quonn wrote:
| > I do see that the EU has missed the boat on every new
| industry in the 21st century compared to the USA.
|
| Perhaps. But for completely different reasons, certainly
| not regulation. And furthermore, while this _may_ hurt the
| EU in the long-run, they are still very good at the kind of
| industries that employ a large number of people across all
| skillsets.
|
| > We will see in 100 years if regulation was the right move
| or not.
|
| No need to wait, we can see this right now. The internet
| and app economy is completely enshittified. Only regulation
| can fix this, the market had 20 years and it only got
| worse.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| >I am not an expert on anti trust, but I do see that the EU
| has missed the boat on every new industry in the 21st
| century compared to the USA.
|
| Are you able to cite any examples of 'missing the boat'?
| Detrytus wrote:
| Not the GP, but from the top of my head:
|
| - semiconductor manufacturing
|
| - Internet and social media, streaming services, etc.
|
| - Cryptocurrencies
|
| - Smartphones and related app stores
|
| - Electric cars
|
| - Self-driving cars
|
| - AI
|
| It certainly feels like all the technological innovation
| happens in the US, and sometimes in China, but never in
| Europe.
| spiralpolitik wrote:
| Some counter points:
|
| ARM originated at a European company (Acorn/Olivetti).
|
| Bluetooth originated at a European Company (Ericsson)
|
| Psion, Nokia, and Ericsson invented what would be
| considered the basics of the Smartphone (via Symbian,
| Series 60 etc)
|
| Spotify is a Swedish company.
|
| Nokia and Ericsson produce a good amount of the telecoms
| infrastructure equipment.
|
| While Europe certainly hasn't had a start-up culture on
| par with the US it hasn't been a complete slouch either.
| Detrytus wrote:
| Acorn was a British company, not European, and had
| significant help from Apple since 1980s. Nokia never
| really had any significant share of smartphone market
| once it took of. Nokia and Ericsson telecom
| infrastructure is inferior to Huawei's. I will give you
| Bluetooth and Spotify, but that's just a drop in a
| bucket.
| spiralpolitik wrote:
| Olivetti (an Italian company) took over Acorn in 1985.
| This was around the time the ARM processor was being
| developed. Acorn was in danger of going under at this
| time when one of their creditors bounced.
|
| Apple didn't come along until much later.
| hifromwork wrote:
| >Acorn was a British company, not European
|
| Last I've checked UK was firmly in Europe. I assume you
| meant something different, because literal interpretation
| makes no sense to me. Can you clarify?
| hifromwork wrote:
| > Internet and social media, streaming services, etc.
|
| The very WWW originated at CERN in Europe.
|
| > Cryptocurrencies
|
| For all we know Satoshi could've been an European. Same
| goes for Nicolas van Saberhagen. Vitalik is neither
| European nor from the US. I'm not an expert, but most of
| the US cryptocurrency startups I see are cheap pyramid
| schemes, and no real innovation anymore.
|
| > AI
|
| DeepMind was a British company. It had several successes,
| and was acquired by Google later, which raises a question
| what does it mean "innovation happens in the US". In this
| case innovation happens in UK, but it's owned by a
| American company.
|
| There's certainly a lot more, but (similarly to you) I
| don't keep track of nationality of every company I
| interact with. And the question is pretty fuzzy in case
| of very international companies.
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| So what's the alternative you're proposing? That we let
| companies abuse their position and do whatever they want?
|
| > they don't want any company to do anything to have an
| advantage compared to their competitors?
|
| Let's imagine the answer to this question is yes. Let's assume
| the EU doesn't want any company to do anything to have an
| advantage and that they believe a company should gain or lose
| market only based on the quality of their output. Would that be
| a bad thing?
| endisneigh wrote:
| Presumably having a better product itself is inherently
| advantageous and thus disadvantageous to competitors. Seems
| bad to me.
|
| The alternative is if they don't like the company they should
| just ban wholesale.
|
| I honestly don't see the point of banning bundling. There are
| plenty of bundled things that are ignored. Great example of
| this ironically is iMessage in the EU. Bundled but dwarfed by
| WhatsApp.
| shagie wrote:
| > Soon the EU will charge parents for giving their children
| undue advantages as well.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron
|
| > In the year 2081, the Constitution dictates that all
| Americans are fully equal and not allowed to be smarter,
| better-looking, or more physically able than anyone else. The
| Handicapper General's agents enforce the equality laws, forcing
| citizens to wear "handicaps": masks for those who are too
| beautiful, earpiece radios for the intelligent that broadcast
| loud noises meant to disrupt thoughts, and heavy weights for
| the strong or athletic.
|
| https://archive.org/stream/HarrisonBergeron/Harrison%20Berge...
| arlort wrote:
| > they don't want any company to do anything to have an
| advantage compared to their competitors?
|
| You could just have a better product
|
| It's quite the simple thought experiment, if teams is a better
| product than the alternatives no harm will come of it from
| being unbundled from unrelated products
|
| If on the other hand its usage will fall then that means that
| there were better (for some users) products whose creators were
| being harmed not because of any fault of their product but
| because their product wasn't owned by an established company
| which could exploit its own position
| userbinator wrote:
| Teams is "an exercise in mediocrity".
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| The problem is that big companies are distorting competition
| simply due to their size. Smaller companies cannot compete.
| Startups are mostly doomed. How can they compete when a bigger
| player can copy their innovation, bundle it, or sell it at a
| loss, or for free? You can't afford to sue them. You may note
| ven prevail given their ownership of numerous patents. There is
| no fair competition if these companies are not broken up. Or in
| the least, they need to be taxed differently.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| What market are they monopolizing by having Teams auto start?
| b800h wrote:
| Collaboration tooling. It's particularly egregious as -
| particularly once you get past 250 members of staff - it's a
| plainly inferior product.
|
| https://www.statista.com/chart/20028/daily-active-users-of-s...
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Where do they allege monopoly?
| worksonmine wrote:
| I hate on Microsoft every chance I get, but how is this situation
| different than Google bundling Meet on Android? Should Google be
| worried?
| seszett wrote:
| I don't think Meet is bundled with Android by Google, it's not
| there if you use LineageOS. It's probably an individual choice
| by phone makers (although maybe not a completely free choice).
|
| I do agree it shouldn't be bundled of course. But even Chrome
| isn't bundled for example, so I don't think Google is actually
| pushing many apps.
| londons_explore wrote:
| It's bundled with all the other Google apps - eg. The play
| store, docs, search etc.
|
| OEM's have to ship them all or none of them.
| aniforprez wrote:
| I've never ever had Meet bundled with any of my phones in
| my years of using android. On my latest S22, obviously the
| play store is there but the only other core Google apps
| that were installed were calendar, chrome, fit, Gmail,
| Google (the main "app" that probably bundles in the
| assistant and stuff like that), play music, maps and a
| couple of others. There was no meet and I can still
| uninstall calendar
| dacryn wrote:
| I have been on android for 10+ years and never has Meet gotten
| in my way or even launched itself.
|
| It's totally uncomparable. Also google is not actively pushing
| it's customers to use it to kill their competitors
| shkkmo wrote:
| I don't think Meet is bundled with Android. My pixel didn't
| come with it. It is bundled with some chromebooks.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| The issue is not that "Microsoft bundled Teams" but rather that
| Microsoft came to companies like mine at the time and
| essentially said "We are deprecating Skype and we are offering
| this resource-hungry, bug-ridden program called Teams as only
| replacement. You don't have to use it, but we'll bill you for
| it anyway".
|
| They knew full well that the average IT department would not
| approve paying for a second tool and offered no "discount" if
| you didn't want to use it. It was take it or take it.
|
| My only complaint is that this didn't happen sooner, but I'll
| cut them some slack for not taking swift action during the
| notably-unremarkable year 2020.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The issue in your scenario is the ineptitude of the IT
| department/company leadership.
| ssahoo wrote:
| Why don't they apply the laws universally and effectively make
| this kind of bundling illegal for mega corporations? For
| endusers, it feels like they are playing with different rules for
| Microsoft Apple Adobe and Google. Since EU waits until the damage
| is done and milks them, it barely helps the situation for
| consumers. For corps they just assume the penalty as cost of
| doing business.
| petesergeant wrote:
| Because it's expensive and complicated to bring civil suits
| against organizations with that many lawyers
| gostsamo wrote:
| Because this is not bundling of features, but of market
| products. Here the bundling merges two markets which are not
| related, while it might make sense to bundle word and excel for
| example which are parts of an office suite while teams is
| totally different business solution.
| falcor84 wrote:
| How do you define "not related" - why would a collaboration
| tool not be considered part of something called "office
| suite"?
|
| Also to the parent's point, why is it that Google are allowed
| to bundle Meet as part of their Google Workspace - it does
| seem like the violations are only applied based on
| retroactive decisions.
| gostsamo wrote:
| Generally, you define a market by the market participants.
| There are people who need only the the office suite, and
| there are those who need the office suite and the colab
| chat but not necessarily by the same provider. This is
| visible by the fact that you have colab software providers
| like slack/zoom.
|
| Microsoft is targeted at the moment because they are market
| leader on the office suite market and they are leveraging
| this position to capture the colab software one. Google is
| not a market leader and in addition, they don't have
| offline tools to separate from their workspace, though this
| is less significant than the market dominance.
| eindiran wrote:
| I am generally open to this idea, but this particular way
| of defining what bundles are allowed or not seems
| incredibly weak. Take Adobe's Creative Cloud. There is
| almost no one in the world who uses all of the tools in
| it. There are dozens of alternatives made by other
| companies that only cover a single component software.
| Adobe is the market leader with virtually all of the
| component pieces of software. Why is the US not targeting
| Adobe with antitrust for bundling together tools for
| typesetters, marketers, video editors, animators, etc,
| etc?
| xmprt wrote:
| But where do you draw the line? In college, I used Word a
| lot and barely used Excel. At work I use Excel way more
| than Word (and often times I could easily just use a
| simple markdown editor instead of Word so I arguably
| wouldn't use that either). So they seem to be two
| different markets. I probably use the integrations
| between Excel and Teams more than I use the integrations
| between Word and Excel so bundling Teams makes more sense
| to me.
| layer8 wrote:
| You still habe the choice of purchasing Word and Excel
| separately, and always had. More importantly, installing
| Word doesn't also automatically install Excel, and vice
| versa.
|
| Microsoft wouldn't have a problem if they provided a
| choice of Office with Teams and Office without Teams.
| lolinder wrote:
| > You still habe the choice of purchasing Word and Excel
| separately, and always had.
|
| By this logic I can buy Excel + Word + Powerpoint and
| avoid Teams. They offer each office product individually
| _or_ all their office products as a subscription. Why
| would it be different if they _also_ offered a special
| subscription that _just_ excluded teams?
| lolinder wrote:
| > Google is not a market leader
|
| Do you have stats that show this? "Market share" sites
| never feel very trustworthy to me, but they all claim
| Google Workspace has a substantially higher market share
| than Office 365, and anecdotally that matches my
| experience.
|
| > addition, they don't have offline tools to separate
| from their workspace
|
| This doesn't make sense to me as an argument. It sounds
| like you're saying that because Google hasn't bothered
| providing an offline version of their product they get a
| pass on bundling collaboration software, whereas because
| Microsoft provides an offline version that makes their
| bundling more egregious. Why exactly would that be?
| navane wrote:
| For antitrust to work, all we have to do is break up the
| biggest players. There's no point in focusing on (in that
| market) smaller players. They'll get to them because
| recursion.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Why is excel and word any more connected than teams and excel
| or teams and word? Or even outlook? If outlook can be grouped
| with "office suite", and EU didn't have a problem with that,
| why not Teams? It is also for communicating with people.
| gostsamo wrote:
| Because word and excel go together in the needs of a
| business and those who usually buy one use the other as
| well. All competition of MS in this space offer similar
| products bundled in a similar way.
|
| Teams is a recent addition which is orthogonal and is a
| product from entirely another market where the competition
| has offerings without an office suite. Looking from there,
| MS uses unrelated offering to hide the price of their
| product while pushing it to hundreds of millions who are
| already their clients.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I disagree. Excel is probably far more used than Word,
| and word could be dropped from many people's computers
| and no one would notice.
|
| Outlook is probably the most widely used, and again, if
| outlook can be considered part of the office suite, which
| it has been for decades, why not another communication
| software?
|
| My broader point being these groupings are all pretty
| arbitrary.
| EasyMark wrote:
| Wouldn't it be that we have a fairly widely spread
| defecto definition of "office suite" as word processor,
| spread sheet, presentation, email as it's been that way
| for decades? Not sure about "communications"however I
| think it is a serious argument to consider that a
| separate product, but not the others, they're kind of
| like peanut butter and jelly or Bonnie & Clyde or the
| three stooges.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I think that is a very un-serious argument with no
| consistency.
|
| Microsoft has always sold a cheaper "office suite"
| without outlook. What businesses have historically
| bundled and not bundled is irrelevant to what is best for
| society going forward.
|
| Surely there were many features that many software
| businesses add that weren't there before. What if
| Microsoft relabeled Teams to be part of Outlook? Like
| they made Calendars part of Outlook. It all feels like
| starting at the result and working backwards towards a
| justification.
| guerby wrote:
| EU courts ruled that bundling an OS with a machine was ok.
|
| https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&do.
| ..
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| Why is bundling Teams illegal, but bundling Word, Excel and the
| rest of the office bits totally cool?
| rockooooo wrote:
| It shouldn't be! Forcing big companies to unbundle product
| pricing would give new entrants to the market a fighting
| change at success.
| nickff wrote:
| Should they have to un-bundle Windows Explorer, Notepad,
| Photo Viewer, Control Panel, and all the other utilities as
| well, under the same logic? If not, why?
| rockooooo wrote:
| 1) technically? yes, absolutely- apps like explorer or
| photo viewer should only use public APIs so other
| companies can make comparable apps on the OS with 90%
| market share 2) these are all OS utilities, not workplace
| apps - there's a big difference between Adobe/Microsoft
| Office/Google bundling their apps where there's a very
| clear, very powerful disincentive to compete vs something
| like explorer.
| tpmoney wrote:
| > these are all OS utilities
|
| I think part of the problem is "what is an OS utility"
| and "what is an app". All your OS configuration could be
| done via a REST API, text files or some other well
| defined protocol. So you could have competing
| configuration apps that all help you manage your config
| in their own way and unbundle the control panel.
| Realistically looking at your average sparse linux distro
| shows just how "minimal" an OS can be, and even they
| bundle applications. Yet, I realistically don't thing
| consumers or the tech market at large would be assisted
| by a law mandating that all operating systems be as
| minimal as the linux kernel (no GNU/Linux, that's
| bundling!). And even if you did go that far, now we get
| into arguments over monolithic kernels and micro kernels.
| layer8 wrote:
| Bundling is not illegal as long as the bundling is not
| forced. When Microsoft got into trouble by bundling Media
| Player with Windows, the fix was to offer Windows with or and
| without Media Player ("Windows N"). The bundled offer became
| legal by also offering the unbundled version.
| chucke1992 wrote:
| and the hilarious part is that just like with IE it
| addressed completely non-existent problem as the future
| showed that the users went after subscription services and
| browsing on mobile.
| pndy wrote:
| Endusers should have a total control over what is getting
| installed on their machines - just like we used to not so long
| ago or how some Linux distros allows you to select additional
| software. Each operating system coming from the biggest
| corporations should offer two paths: express/recommended setup
| and a fully customizable one for advanced users.
| throwAGIway wrote:
| What if I want to buy a fully integrated, fully bundled
| install-and-forget OS?
|
| If the EU makes Apple unbundle all the good stuff from macOS
| I'll finally move to the US.
| alphabeta2024 wrote:
| Just use the express setup.
| palata wrote:
| The EU wants to give you the choice. You will have the
| choice to use everything Apple makes.
|
| The only reason to move to the US would be because you
| really don't want to have a choice, but that would be
| weird.
| xigoi wrote:
| Each operating system coming from the biggest corporations
| should offer two paths: _express /recommended setup_ and a
| fully customizable one for advanced users.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Well the logical conclusion of that is to break up the
| businesses. No other remedy or it's just going to happen again
| and again, in subtle and not so subtle ways (bundling Teams for
| free was so absurdly obviously anti-competitive no one has even
| doubted that in this thread so far..)
| bee_rider wrote:
| I wonder if they'll go after iMessage on iOS too.
| sunaookami wrote:
| I already know how this will be solved: Microsoft will pay a
| (small) fine and file it under "the cost of doing business" while
| the damage is already done. Teams is one of the absolutely worst
| products ever programmed, it's hiliarious how bad it is. It only
| reached its market share because Microsoft gave it away "for
| free" with Office 365 or MS 365 or whatever it's called now.
| EasyMark wrote:
| Don't these "actions"usually include separating the products
| out the way the EU wants them?aka don't include Teams in EU
| installs of MS office or don't even include office at all?
| Otherwise a fine is useless.
| sunaookami wrote:
| Doesn't matter if everyone already uses Teams and the damage
| is done. Look at Netscape vs IE.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| Yet we'd absolutely balk at a computer or phone not coming
| with a browser by default nowadays. I don't really think
| that ruling was on the right side of history.
| chucke1992 wrote:
| Except the end conclusion was that "paying for a browser is
| stupid".
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| Does make much difference if all their competitors are
| already dead.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| I use Teams every day for work, I'm not sure why it's
| considered so bad? It seems user friendly and useful, to me.
| Non-tech worker (finance).
| swsieber wrote:
| Very similar to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40787842 on
| the front page today.
| barryrandall wrote:
| Oh well. I guess it's time for Microsoft to discontinue Teams,
| destroy any related IP, purge any copies from GitHub/developer
| workstations/backups, forcibly uninstall it from end-user
| machines, update Windows to forcibly delete any copies installed
| in the future, and never, ever, ever under any circumstances try
| to compete in the chat/video conferencing market ever again. The
| world will survive, if just barely.
| BigJono wrote:
| What would I ever do without my software engineering team
| collaboration tool that can't send a fucking code snippet
| without burning half the screen on whitespace and a 400px font
| size title lol
| initplus wrote:
| And that's the upgraded version. Previously it just... wasn't
| possible at all?
| bornfreddy wrote:
| We should not mock MS though. This is a _really_ difficult
| feature to get it right the first time around. /s
| phito wrote:
| My god yes. It's so, so bad...
| daemonologist wrote:
| I've taken to sending code snippets as regular message text
| with the monospaced font, because the code snippets feature
| is so awkward and slow (and sometimes won't load for the
| recipient at all).
| stefan_ wrote:
| My favorite Teams bug and it took me a moment to understand
| the stupidity of what was happening: you copy a message you
| have received from someone and send it back to them. It is
| invisible on their screen. You have dark mode so what you
| copied was white text, which ends up being white on their
| light mode Teams.
|
| Nowadays I just get irrationally angry at the utter imbecile
| that decided you want to copy an abbreviated date and the
| sender name whenever you copy a message.
| irusensei wrote:
| Copy and paste retaining style is one of the most annoying
| things in normie computing. Just why? And on teams it
| basically infects any other text you right afterwards.
| Phelinofist wrote:
| I mostly use "> " for this, but that might hit the message
| length restriction, then you are forced to use the snippet
| thing.
| kyriakos wrote:
| Haha I've faced this issue for years but it seems like they
| fixed it. You now can also set the code highlighting option
| directly from the editor without going into options. Took
| them years unfortunately.
| a_e_k wrote:
| I've often wondered about that. I feel like it says something
| about the development team behind Teams if either, (a) it
| doesn't bother them, or (b) they don't dog-food their own
| product this way.
|
| (Just give me fenced code blocks, please!)
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I hope your code doesn't use colons anyway, :parameter for
| example is a forbidden word.
|
| Oh, and line breaks get replaced by something that breaks
| some editors1, and quotes obviously get mangled.
|
| 1 - I mean, look at their name! Teams is right here!
| chongli wrote:
| Don't forget compensation! Microsoft should be forced to pay
| compensation to anyone who has ever used Teams, scaled in
| proportion to the number of hours they've had to leave it
| running on their computer.
| falcor84 wrote:
| That actually would be amazing - I would be very much in
| favour of large companies (e.g. based on number of users /
| market cap) having to put significant sums of money in escrow
| ahead of any software release, which would then be
| distributed to its users as compensation in the case of a
| data breach or regulatory rulings.
| wpasc wrote:
| I can't imagine any jurisdiction that tried this would see
| anything other than large companies prohibiting their
| software from being used in that jurisdiction. Any company
| that then grew large would quickly exit. Every iOS update
| requires 1B+ to sit in escrow?
| bloopernova wrote:
| The most beautiful words I've read today.
|
| Can everyone please use Mattermost, Slack, or Matrix chat?
| croes wrote:
| Or maybe MS could try real competition.
|
| A standalone product the user can buy and install if he wishes
| to.
|
| You know, like other companies who don't happen to be the OS
| developer.
| EasyMark wrote:
| Or just not install it on new windows versions? I mean it's
| easy enough to leave old versions intact if they already exist
| and make IT install teams/office if they're actually being
| used.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| They should get rid of Edge and a few other stuffs too. Is there
| a tool to conveniently remove any feature I do not want? Googled
| around and looks like Powershell is my only reliable option --
| and still I cannot remove Edge.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| "Debloater" is the term you probably want to search for.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Thanks! I'll try them out. I did remember running one of
| these after the installation so maybe some updates bring back
| the bloaters.
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| I thought this was going to be about bundling Teams in O365 and
| other biz deals.
|
| It's wild to me that Teams is _so fucking horrible_ that many
| businesses who effectively get it for free as part of other
| dealings still choose to pay for Slack.
|
| Sadly I know of many, many more companies where the offer is
| indeed too good to refuse, much to the disappointment of their
| workforce.
|
| I was helping out at a place where _two employees_ needed Word
| and Excel licenses, and somehow they got a massive, free Teams
| license out of it.
| dacryn wrote:
| it's because teams is not really free
|
| It's free per user, but it's quite expensive if you start
| adding meeting rooms, voip, webinar, ...
|
| Zoom+slack are literally cheaper in total, but the startup cost
| is very visible and teams startup cost is 0.
| nolok wrote:
| Oh it's not even free per user.
|
| The moment the EU opened an investigation [1], they reacted
| [2] by getting it out of their bundle pack [3], and offering
| it on the side instead, with the new bundles being marked
| "[bundle name] EEA NO TEAMS", and teams being priced
| 5EUR/user/month.
|
| At least I guess kudos to Microsoft for learning a trick
| Facebook/Meta/Apple keep ignoring, the moment they say it
| coming they switched gear because they know the EU won't buy
| their "good for the user" thing.
|
| > Today we are announcing proactive changes that we hope will
| start to address these concerns in a meaningful way, even
| while the European Commission's investigation continues and
| we cooperate with it. These changes will impact our Microsoft
| 365 and Office 365 suites for business customers in the
| European Economic Area and Switzerland. They are designed to
| address two concerns that are central to the Commission's
| investigation: (1) that customers should be able to choose a
| business suite without Teams at a price less than those with
| Teams included; and (2) that we should do more to make
| interoperability easier between rival communication and
| collaboration solutions and Microsoft 365 and Office 365
| suites.
|
| They also made it extra annoying to switch from a regular
| package to that one, and somehow when you search on products
| in your admin (if you're already a customer) you need to know
| what to type for those no teams bundle to show up.
|
| [1] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/api/files/doc
| ume...
|
| [2] https://blogs.microsoft.com/eupolicy/2023/08/31/european-
| com...
|
| [3] https://www.microsoft.com/en-
| us/licensing/news/microsoft365-...
| hnlmorg wrote:
| It's also because the people who often mandate Teams are more
| comfortable with the Microsoft ecosystem.
|
| They run Windows rather than macOS. They think in terms of
| Active Directory. If it's not MS then it isn't "enterprise"
| in their world view.
| 7952 wrote:
| And often their core responsibility will be security,
| governance, vendor management, digital transformation etc.
| Not the actual operations of the business or the comfort
| and productivity of staff.
| mhaberl wrote:
| > It's wild to me that Teams is so fucking horrible that many
| businesses who effectively get it for free as part of other
| dealings still choose to pay for Slack.
|
| I don't agree.
|
| For many years now I use Linux. I pay for Slack because some of
| my clients use it and it is convenient. For some other clients
| I need to use Teams.
|
| I like Teams better. I never had issues with them. Slack I
| reinstall every 2-3 months because it breaks in some weird way;
| last time yesterday when I uploaded a 'big file' (csv of a few
| mb), not only did it crash but restarting it didn't help. Teams
| work good for chating, for the calendar, and for video calls. I
| have a lot better experience with Teams for video calls than
| Google Meet.
| realusername wrote:
| They must have improved something because last time I tried,
| it had the sound quality of a 90s phone box on Linux because
| they copied over the Skype code which never worked.
| gmokki wrote:
| Slack with the bundled chrome has been slow to support
| Wayland, even when it has required just one build time config
| switch for the past 3 years.
|
| And slack does not support audio/video calls on
| Linux/Firefox.
| sqeaky wrote:
| I want to avoid the ms ecosystem so much that I use teams vs
| other tools as a litmus test.
|
| If I am not desperate for work I tell contracting firms "no
| teams meetings" in writing when we setting up new contracts.
| Often, this is isn't a problem and they setup a zoom, webex,
| or even a plain phone call. Frequently, they try to setup
| calls on teams and usually about 15m before I remind them
| that I won't do teams and either they tell me to install
| teams and send me a windows download link (which does me no
| good) or the frantically struggle to do anything else. When I
| explain that I won't install ms software and I will skip
| their offer for it their mind is blown and and I refer them
| back to the email they saw, responded to, and agreed to. Then
| I avoid working for someone who ignored me and would likely
| ignore me again over more serious matters.
|
| I should probably have more filters like this but avoiding
| this and the C# work closet to me has saved me a lot of long
| term pain.
| neonsunset wrote:
| Avoiding C#? That's quite an unfortunate way of looking at
| the situation if it leads you to missing out on one of the
| best programming languages of today.
| sqeaky wrote:
| I strongly despise C#, and I say that with about 5 real
| years of experience with it. I have been on teams
| delivering real products with it.
|
| It is like Java but married to microsoft while philanders
| as it pleases. And when I say that out loud some putz
| always responds "but Mono!" and then the thing I need is
| inevitably not supported on Mono. When it is working it
| is stuck on windows server and needing a reboot for some
| half-assed update microsoft is pushing. With Java I can
| have all that on a Linux but at least pick which major
| vendor bends me over! Maybe C# works in Unity, but that
| is its fan scattering mess.
|
| In C, C++, or Rust I am not beholden to one company and
| can actually control the hardware to do my bidding. I can
| go into the compilers to find bugs and the creators are
| responsive when I make bug reports. Often these are more
| expressive and have tinier code as well. Isn't C#
| supposed to be faster to develop in these old crusty
| systems languages? Why that never the case on real teams
| I am on?
|
| If performance isn't what I need but rather short
| development cycles there is Lua, Python, BASH, or my
| personal favorite Ruby. All of these allow hacking
| together stuff so much faster, and when I have needed
| they it offer more control of the garbage collector or
| other runtime features so I often get better performance
| out of them.
|
| Then there are the shops using C#. I don't know why, and
| I see no obvious mechanism that causes this but the
| culture in C# shops are invariably terrible. I have done
| 16 contracts in the past 22 years and the least stressful
| most productive shops are always the _nix using
| professionals or JavaScript slinging kids fresh from
| college.
|
| The overly corporate C# shops always seem stuck in bad
| ways, pushing some non-agile scrum, lacking any critical
| thinking, and are often overtly hostile. These are the
| shops that buy whatever consultant are selling and force
| it on me without ever consulting me. I have seen one
| fist-fight break out in the office and it was in a C#
| shop. Somehow those backend Unix greybeard wizards are
| always able to talk through their differences with the 22
| year blue haired kid who wants progressive typing on the
| TypeScript interface that is fed by that wizard's
| service, and they often do it while discussing technical
| merit instead of political posturing.
|
| At last C# contract I started I left after 2 weeks (and I
| am not counting that towards my 16), because the lead
| developer was preposterously racist and felt comfortable
| opening up to me about that in that short a time period.
| I had a lot of self reflection about why he felt
| comfortable dumping his race war crap on me, and I have
| no clue why.
|
| C# is not as fast as the slow languages but productive
| languages. C# is not productive as fast but low
| productivity languages. And every other thing I mentioned
| doesn't even have a wiff of vendor lock-in. I am good
| without C# and the cultures that somehow arise around it.
|
| (and the pay sucks I easily get double doing _anything*
| else)
| rufius wrote:
| I'm curious what materially changed beyond Slack complaining.
|
| Microsoft has long bundled Lync/Skype-for-Business with Office
| 365. Hell it did that, I'm pretty sure, before Slack even
| existed.
| thinkindie wrote:
| skype for business didn't really take off as much as team now.
| Team spread like a cancer like nothing else before.
| rufius wrote:
| Fair enough - also lol at people downvoting. It was an honest
| question.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Official EU commission release:
| https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_...
| lccerina wrote:
| And I guess the next one will be OpenAI trash (aka Bing chat
| enterprise or something) bundled in O365
| jwnin wrote:
| The Copilot meeting summary features in Teams are actually
| pretty good. It's far more likely that someone will quickly
| skim the meeting summary than sit through an hour long meeting
| recording. Costs extra, though.
| robotnikman wrote:
| This I do agree with. While AI feels like it has been shoved
| in many places it doesn't fit so well, it is amazing when it
| comes to quickly summarizing meetings.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| I never understood how Microsoft giving you software you are not
| forced to use is bad, but apple limiting which software you can
| run on your device is not.
|
| From anti user perspective MS does a lot worse than adding teams
| - mandatory online accounts to begin with.
| falcor84 wrote:
| > mandatory online accounts
|
| It's not mandatory - there's a simple 11-step sequence of hacks
| that if executed correctly will let you create an offline user
| /s.
|
| [0] https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/install-
| windows-11-witho...
| callc wrote:
| > how Microsoft giving you software you are not forced to use
| is bad
|
| This does not represent the actual reality where MS crams their
| products down users' orifices - like so many other companies do
| too.
|
| > but apple limiting which software you can run on your device
| is not
|
| This is also bad. Users deserve the respect and right to have
| general purpose computing platforms be open.
|
| Edit: whitespace
| noneeeed wrote:
| > apple limiting which software you can run on your device is
| not
|
| If you are talking about iOS and the app store, that is another
| ongoing battle between the European Commission and Apple. It
| has been reported here on HN a number of times recently.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Aware of that but it should have started 15 years ago.
| miohtama wrote:
| Ask forgiveness.
|
| Did Microsoft already wipe out Slack during these four years of
| bundling since the complaint of 2020?
| sirspacey wrote:
| Effectively yes. They sold to Salesforce for $30B, but they
| easily could have won the market if not for this move on
| Microsoft's part.
| eysgshsvsvsv wrote:
| There is no could have been in reality. Laws of physics was
| not broken since Slack was invented. You are reducing a
| complex system of economics, technology, market, phycology,
| politics etc into a sentence "could have been". It sounds
| smart and logical but it has no existential relevance.
| pie420 wrote:
| hopefully this time, the DOJ is not merciful and breaks
| Microsoft into 3-4 different entities.
| bogwog wrote:
| All they gotta do is split Office into its own independent
| company, and so many problems will start to solve themselves.
| joduplessis wrote:
| Adjacent point, but I recently bought a Windows laptop (after 10
| years on Mac). I've been blown away by the sheer amount of
| advertising & upsells at OS level. Some of it you can turn off,
| but others you can't seem to (for me at least). I don't ever
| remember Windows feeling like you're borrowing it from MS.
| dawnerd wrote:
| Seriously. I thought Mac was getting bad but upgraded to win 11
| on my gaming pc. How is that acceptable for business
| environments? One wrong click and you've got a new subscription
| it seems.
| EasyMark wrote:
| Business versions are stripped of that stuff in my
| experience, no? The home version is rife with it. I haven't
| been on windows in a few years though.
| sqeaky wrote:
| I left windows for Linux back in the middle of the XP days. I
| came back to this for contracting work and setting up a shared
| VR gaming computer in the living room. The absolute shit level
| of treatment windows users tolerate is mindboggling.
|
| On the corporate laptops I am lent the advertising is generally
| minimal, but non-zero, and that surprised me. If I search I
| don't want whatever you are selling I want files on this
| computer or maybe documents on the corporate network. That
| struck me as inappropriate, but the constant bombard of noise
| on the personal computer is outrageous. Ads in the start menu,
| news going to sites with ads, popups, and that is before
| software, steam has its own too, but at least it moderates to
| one ad each launch.
|
| Installing Gentoo is easier than avoiding ads on windows.
| joduplessis wrote:
| I need Windows for work, but same - dual booted Ubuntu right
| away.
| lawlessone wrote:
| > feeling like you're borrowing it from MS.
|
| Thank you!!
|
| That describes the feeling i've had with so much software in
| recent years, i just wasn't sure how to say until reading it
| from you.
| intrasight wrote:
| My standard suggestion is to use Windows Server - which has
| none of that bloatware and advertising. The free OS you get
| from a vendor is free for a reason.
| throwitaway222 wrote:
| More countries should exit
| EasyMark wrote:
| Exit what?
| outside1234 wrote:
| Wait, so then is it ALSO illegal to tie FaceTime to iOS?
|
| And whatever the Google thing is called with Gmail?
| indiantinker wrote:
| Hate teams! I have heard many friends quit companies as they
| could not stand using teams after companies abandoned slack to
| jump on the free teams bandwagon. They had to hire Microsoft
| experts to manage the IT infrastructure which was just auto-
| managed before Microsoft sold them the stack.
| mikestew wrote:
| _I have heard many friends quit companies as they could not
| stand using teams_
|
| I could believe that one might have _a_ friend that is
| privileged enough (and petty enough) to quit over such
| trivialities. But "many"? Color me...skeptical.
| vundercind wrote:
| I've moved to a place with it and if they're remote workers,
| I could see it. It's _really_ bad for remote work, in the
| sense that it simply discourages effective chat communication
| patterns for teams (yes, Teams is bad for teams). I could
| absolutely see that getting bad enough that someone would
| leave, largely because the tools the company selected were
| wrecking communication and making everything miserable.
| swozey wrote:
| At the height of Covid I know a bunch of companies that
| started using Teams to effectively monitor their employee
| idle time at PCs. Teams had a much more robust admin/usage
| reporting system. That's when those little mouse jigglers
| started showing up all over Amazon to keep your machine from
| appearing idle.
|
| I'm in a decent amount of engineering social channels and
| while I never heard someone leave specifically for that i
| could see it. I absolutely saw people not take jobs because
| of it.
|
| Which, considering all of the layoffs and how the markets
| going now, I miss having that power.
| miked85 wrote:
| I don't think it's all that petty. Teams is really bad, and
| if you have to deal with it daily, time to find another job.
| badgersnake wrote:
| Writing the messages on sandpaper and transporting them via my
| back passage would be more pleasant than using teams.
| djha-skin wrote:
| If you "just want chat" but are required to use Teams at work,
| you might try pidgin[1] with the MS Teams plugin[2]. The former
| can be installed via scoop and therefore does not require admin
| priveleges to install.
|
| This thing still works, and works better than ever, with plugin
| for modern chat services available.
|
| 1: https://www.pidgin.im/
|
| 2: https://github.com/EionRobb/purple-teams
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| I started having a bit of hope, until I read the cons :
|
| > Doesn't support calls, provides direct links to the Teams
| website
| bongodongobob wrote:
| The key features of Teams are having your files and calendars
| in one spot. It's more than just a chat app, which I feel like
| HN folks miss the mark on.
| crowcroft wrote:
| What's the difference between anti-competitive bundling, and
| developing seamless integrated experiences?
|
| If this is anti-competitive, is it anti-competitive for Apple to
| bundle music features/up-sell into the iOS UI, or provide an
| interface for headphones that no other manufacturer can integrate
| with?
| talldayo wrote:
| > What's the difference between anti-competitive bundling, and
| developing seamless integrated experiences?
|
| The availability of APIs for third-party developers to create a
| similar competing experience.
| stock_toaster wrote:
| Also an actual monopoly (windows OS).
| crowcroft wrote:
| I think that's a completely fair distinction.
|
| Do you draw the line at APIs? Should Apple be forced to sell
| H1 chips and let other headphone makers create the same
| experience as AirPods?
| bongodongobob wrote:
| There is one, you can add all sorts of third party add-ons to
| Teams.
| talldayo wrote:
| But can your app be integrated into Windows with equal
| footing as Teams?
| bongodongobob wrote:
| I don't even know what that means.
| elevatedastalt wrote:
| What API exists for third-party developers to create
| experiences similar to first party Apple apps?
| gabeio wrote:
| While they offer it they don't hand it to you for free just
| because you bought their iCloud storage. The issue here seems
| to be aimed squarely at slack and the like which have been in-
| theory pushed out of the market by teams. Of course most of us
| know that's unfortunate because if they actually used teams for
| a little they wouldn't use it even if it was bundled (probably
| why MS is trying to stick it everywhere).
| EasyMark wrote:
| I thought the issue was that it comes installed by default.
| Like the old "Microsoft installed a browser to kill netscape"
| brawl in America.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| Where does that end? Is Paint ok to have installed by
| default? You can generate images in it now using some sort
| of credit system, so it's not totally free. Should Adobe
| sue?
|
| I just don't get the EU's overzealous regulations. Who is
| being hurt by Teams? Slack/Discord/Zoom? I doubt any major
| companies are using Teams just because it's installed. They
| may be using it because it's part of the Office Suite, but
| shouldn't they be allowed to bundle that? Should Adobe not
| be able to bundle everything in Creative Cloud? It just
| seems so arbitrary.
| chucke1992 wrote:
| no, the issue is not with the installation but basically it
| is about slack (and some other not-used app) complaining
| that Teams being a part of an office suite prevented slack
| from competition.
|
| Which is hilarious considering that zoom took off without
| bundling with anything - while slack STILL is unable to
| offer a proper video conferencing.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| I don't understand how bundling Teams has pushed competitors
| out of the market. If anything it should make competitors
| more appealing, as they don't require the bundled MS
| software?
| Vespasian wrote:
| Everybody needs Office. There really is no practical way
| around it for businesses
|
| Now companies get a "free" (initially) software in addition
| to what they actually want.
|
| Microsoft can only afford that because they already get
| Money from their Monopoly product and can finance it that
| way without the customers having the ability to object
| (because Office has a market domineering position).
|
| Business chat competitors can not compete against that
| because no matter how good their product, they cannot force
| companies to buy it as Microsoft can.
|
| Result: Teams wins because Office won.
|
| That is what they EU is having issues with.
| petepete wrote:
| I think it's more a case of "well we already have Teams why
| do you need Slack?"
| spankalee wrote:
| And how would chat and video calls not now be a standard part
| of an office suite anyway?
| EasyMark wrote:
| Something can be seamless AND separate. Just install the
| "seamless" apps as needed. Seamless and needing to be installed
| are orthogonal goals. You can have either, both, or neither. It
| should be the end users choice and a side effect is that
| competitors can have a chance as well.
| crowcroft wrote:
| They should be, but are they in practice? It can be quite
| advantageous to bundle them together.
| colonwqbang wrote:
| Apple still charges extra for the Apple music service, right?
| Spotify costs $12/month, Apple music costs $11. If that's true
| then it seems market competition is working decently in that
| area. If you could launch a competing service and charge $10
| you might have a chance.
|
| What Microsoft did was, they said "Hey we have a monopoly on
| office software. We should have a monopoly on chat too". And
| they started giving away Teams for "free" i.e. all companies
| who were paying for an Office subscription were suddenly paying
| for Teams too with no way to opt out. How is someone going to
| compete, when most of their potential customers are already
| forcibly subscribed to a "good enough" competing service.
|
| It was especially egregious here because Teams was such an
| inferior product so it probably won in no small part due to
| this tactic.
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| I'm not saying MS don't do shady stuff, but why single this
| out? YouTube is a monopoly on video and they bundle Music
| with Premium. Just seems like this is happening everywhere
| all the time.
| gehsty wrote:
| 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.
| tremon wrote:
| These rulings happen way too late, the damage is already done.
| tsunamifury wrote:
| Just wait till they find out about how the enterprise deals work.
| Free windows licenses with Office 365, with retroactive blowup
| clauses that charge the back-dated windows licensing fees if you
| ever stop using Office 365
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Literally everything from Microsoft is bundled in some anti
| competitive way. Edge and Windows. Teams and Office. Excel and
| Word. GitHub and VS. One Drive and Windows. All of it must be
| forced to split up and operate as separate companies. It is the
| ONLY way to not distort the market. Additionally, fines must be
| enacted RETROACTIVELY, along with jail time for executives.
| Enough is enough.
| cgh wrote:
| This. At the least, Office et al should be spun off. The US has
| lost the will to split up anticompetitive companies.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| Good. In our small company of two dozen people we use Teams only
| because of external clients. Otherwise we do away with Google
| Workspace and self-hosted stuff like GitLab.
| chucke1992 wrote:
| so "I hate teams but I use another bundled thing" lol
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| To be fair, anything is better than Teams.
| bigpeopleareold wrote:
| The EU step is complete. Now get all your co-workers and random
| people in your company to stop scheduling stuff in Teams (better
| yet, just stop having meetings - a day of them gets mind-numbing,
| having them practically every day is painful.)
| ant6n wrote:
| For the cost of zoom, i get teams, office and a boat load of
| cloud storage. The software is crap, but the deal is hard to
| beat. Kind of weird how MS keeps undermining their product
| offering with their stupid shannanigans.
| paweladamczuk wrote:
| Maybe a push to eliminate proprietary operating systems and file
| formats from government-supported processes would be more
| effective? It could be legislative but it could also mean
| governments supporting FOSS development more.
|
| Maybe it's wishful thinking, but this just seems to me like
| treating the symptoms instead of the root cause.
| Daishiman wrote:
| Capitalism naturally tends towards the concentration of large
| firms unless regulated; if anything the regulatory intervention
| is coming in too late.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| "More effective" at what?
|
| The state using FOSS is great but that seems quite orthogonal
| to preventing monopoly abuse by proprietary software vendors.
| We can do both.
|
| Edit: I think you may be implying that having a variety of
| choices available would sufficient to prevent monopolies.
| That's not true as long as you have multiple companies able to
| cooperate in doing things like bundling, etc.
| practicemaths wrote:
| I think the EU can & may be doing both.
|
| AFIK, at least a few countries & research entities over there
| are using FOSS, at least in part, as well as promoting it.
|
| Hypothetically just because a Government is using FOSS to
| operate does not mean a company can not still break antitrust
| rules.
| naikrovek wrote:
| Here's the thing, though: Linux as a desktop is absolute trash
| and it doesn't matter if you have been using it as a desktop
| operating system for 30 years, it's still absolutely trash for
| anyone with an idea of what a desktop OS should be.
|
| It is trash in the exact same way that GIMP is trash compared
| to professional tools.
|
| The quality just isn't there, and the quality will never be
| there so long as design decisions are made by anything
| resembling a democracy.
|
| The open source model works for code. It does not work for
| design, and open source developers somehow believe they are as
| good of a designer as they are a developer, and that has never
| been true for anyone, ever.
|
| Asking that someone be forced to switch to Linux from Windows
| or Mac is akin to forcing them to use GIMP instead of
| Photoshop, and if that sounds like a perfectly fine thing to
| you, you are blind to some very important things. Being blind
| to those things is fine so long as you're aware of that
| blindness.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It isn't trash, it just isn't trying to provide a customer
| service like relationship for non-technical users. Why would
| any distro do that? It just seems like a headache, for no
| benefit.
| mr_toad wrote:
| Modern windows with unmatched UI elements of various
| generations, horrible DPI scaling and frankly antiquated
| design elements is starting to look more like Linux than
| Linux.
| bee_rider wrote:
| > It could be legislative but it could also mean governments
| supporting FOSS development more.
|
| To be explicit, if governments want to use open source
| software, which seems like a pretty good idea, they of course
| need to be aware of the fact that lots of it is hobbyist stuff
| tossed out into the public square with no quality guarantees.
|
| To use open source code, the governments will have to fork and
| audit the code, and provide customer service for what is now
| their software. It can be done and it seems like a great way to
| make this stuff available for the non-technical community, but
| it isn't free, of course.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Government should just require open communication protocols/file
| formats, if a competitor is willing to host the same data at
| cost.
|
| Client applications should compete on their individual merits,
| not coast on protocol lock-in.
|
| Would WhatsApp or YouTube have as many users if others could
| build clients for the same data? (PII etc notwithstanding)
|
| Protocols compete on the merits of the protocol, clients compete
| on the merits of the client.
|
| I think this will be the reality/obvious a few decades down the
| line.
| jad wrote:
| Companies can iterate on their products much faster if they're
| not required to publish all of their functionality as public
| APIs. Once the APIs have been published, it's much harder for
| them to be changed.
|
| Doing this also puts them at the mercy of whether or not client
| applications are willing to support their new functionality.
| Maybe YouTube wants clients to adopt some feature, but a
| powerful client application doesn't like that feature and so
| won't support it.
|
| The protocol/platform lock-in is a problem, but preserving
| companies' ability to iterate quickly on features is also very
| important.
| 42lux wrote:
| Some guy at Google who worked on like 14 chat apps over the
| last two decades might just welcome it...
| adam_arthur wrote:
| The company doesn't need to expose custom APIs on their data.
| If they implement a chat protocol, they must allow other
| clients to interface with it.
|
| For the data side, likely any requirements wouldn't go into
| effect until a dataset is deemed sufficiently
| large/societally important, and there could be a period of
| exclusivity similarly to the patent system to encourage
| innovation. This system works very well for new drug
| creation, with competitors free to copy the drug for pennies
| on the dollar after patent expiry, so I very much doubt it
| would stifle innovation in tech, especially given the lower
| capital requirements to innovate.
|
| I'm not suggesting at all the government mandates private
| companies implement a public write api into their own
| datacenter. I'm suggesting the privately hosted data must be
| replicatable and thus hostable by competitors. Likely the
| practical way to do this, technically, is to support a public
| kafka/persistent eventing system such that anybody can
| firehose all historical and new data. Ideally with funding
| help.
|
| Hosting data is cheaper than ever, and continues to deflate
| in cost. The companies in this line of fire are already
| quasi-monopoly behemoths, so I don't buy into the cost-
| prohibitive/stifling innovation perspective.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| It's going to be hard to actually draw a line on what ought
| to be public.
|
| If I make a multiplayer video game and it has a chat
| feature, do I have to expose that?
|
| Opinions and feelings won't cut it: what's the prescriptive
| rule to know?
| bionhoward wrote:
| Ask customers
| 9dev wrote:
| > The company doesn't need to expose custom APIs on their
| data. If they implement a chat protocol, they must allow
| other clients to interface with it.
|
| And how would that work without a way to talk to the
| company's chat server, and document the way to do that, and
| commit to keeping that way of communicating reasonably
| stable? In other words, an API?
|
| Which implies sort of a commitment to the way that chat
| protocol works, maybe even before the company knows how
| that looks like. Modern development methodology, that is,
| working in sprints and iterating towards a local maximum,
| doesn't really go well with an API that's required to work
| pretty much stable from day one. So when would the point in
| time be where you'd be required to open up to other
| clients?
| adam_arthur wrote:
| The comment you're replying to already answers this, so
| I'll refer you to that
| kmeisthax wrote:
| "Public API" doesn't mean you can't change the API, nor does
| it limit how quickly extensions or new versions can be added
| to that API. It just means you have to actually inform people
| of what you're changing and when.
|
| If a client application refuses to implement functionality,
| that's on them, not the original developer. If I want the new
| feature, I'll switch.
|
| These days however, new features nowadays are usually things
| I don't want. Not strictly outright anti-features, but
| usually completely pointless "Bob needs a bonus[0]" changes
| that lets a middle manager put something good in their promo
| packet. The whole reason why people want compatible file
| formats and third-party clients is _specifically_ so we can
| dictate to the originator of those formats and protocols how
| and how fast they can iterate on their products and limit how
| bad they can deliberately make them to increase profits.
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/ssob-7sGVWs?t=2748
| asdasdsddd wrote:
| This is just going to create a perverse incentive to create
| really fat clients.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| > Government should just require open communication
| protocols/file formats
|
| They did, Microsoft made Office support some open XML thing,
| and what changed?
| chucke1992 wrote:
| People realized that actually it requires a lot of investment
| to produce an office suite.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It's not really open, nor is it really the MS Office
| documents format.
|
| And yet, a few competing alternatives appeared anyway.
| megous wrote:
| What changed? It's now trivial to write exporters for Office
| formats for specific use case. Save a sample of what you want
| to have exported, and then just template the XML, generate it
| based on source data and zip it.
|
| Most of the time you don't even need to read the
| specification.
|
| Compare that with the times of eg. closed binary XLS format.
| pyeri wrote:
| We did get Libre office and Apache OpenOffice due to that? I
| think they both should become obsolete in an ideal world
| where folks converse in fluent markdown to achieve everything
| they want in a document.
| kernal wrote:
| >Would YouTube have as many users if others could build clients
| for the same data?
|
| Would those YouTube clients offer a subscription service to pay
| for the data they download, or did you expect Alphabet to cover
| all the costs?
| bilbo0s wrote:
| There are an astounding number of people who never stop for
| even a second to consider the nuts and bolts implications of
| the ideas they want to foist onto society.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| You're talking about the employees of big tech firms,
| right?
| bilbo0s wrote:
| Yes. As well as their detractors.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Pass regulations that might kill YouTube just to see how it
| works out. Maybe Google is more robust and cleverer than we
| expect. Worse case we just lost a bunch of pointless
| reaction videos and other crap.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| They would likely employ advertising, just as YouTube does.
| Are you saying it's not profitable to run a video hosting
| service?
|
| YouTube is evidence of that already.
|
| A more straightforward way to accomplish this in areas where
| content size is large/expensive is to disallow coupling
| client creation with data hosting, and data vendors would
| license access to their data to client creators.
|
| Bundling becomes anti-competitive at a certain network size,
| because there becomes no meaningful way to create a
| competitor network. The essence of what makes capitalism
| effective is competition driving costs lower, and in many
| areas in tech we have very little competition due to large
| network effects.
|
| Keep in mind Capitalism != Free Market. A fully free market
| is a form of Capitalism that has no laws, and no impediment
| to monopoly formation. Competitive Capitalism with minimal
| laws to encourage competitive where large network effects or
| monopolies form is far more societally beneficial in the long
| run.
|
| Decoupling client/data has already been done many times in
| the past in analogous situations, e.g. when movie producers
| were not allowed to own the theaters where the movies were
| played, giving a much more equal footing to smaller content
| producers.
| tpmoney wrote:
| They're asking who's going to cover YouTube's costs for
| providing their videos via API. Or is the expectation that
| if you use a 3rd party client you'll see youtube's ads to
| cover their costs, and then additional ads from the client?
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Yes, there are many ways to do it, one of which I
| described above.
|
| You can disallow bundling a video client with the video
| data provider, thus forcing the data provider to monetize
| by charging the clients to use the data. The clients make
| money either via subscriptions or ads, and selling new
| video data back to the provider.
|
| e.g. Google would have to spin-off or re-org YouTube to
| split client/data and give same pricing terms to their
| client branch as to other third party clients
|
| This is a lighter touch/market based solution, which I
| prefer to being overly prescriptive.
| bee_rider wrote:
| The government should move fast and break things in these
| sorts of cases. Especially in this case... video
| streaming isn't very important, take action that might
| destroy their business model and see if we learn anything
| about how to regulate them in more meaningful markets.
| nox101 wrote:
| I've never used Team but Google Docs/Sheets/Presentation has a
| chat function
|
| https://support.google.com/docs/answer/2494891
|
| Is that required to use an open protocol?
| adam_arthur wrote:
| You're not required to use an open chat protocol, you're
| required to make any chat protocol you use open. (With some
| exceptions)
| osrec wrote:
| I would replace government with people: people should
| collectively demand what you have described.
|
| This ultimately is a function of education, which will get
| better as technical knowledge becomes more widely and freely
| available.
|
| As you say, it's only a matter of time before the walled
| gardens start to crumble.
| tenacious_tuna wrote:
| > I would replace government with people
|
| This is... The entire point of a government. Yes, they're
| flawed, but they're meant to exercise the will of the people,
| especially in terms of regulating entities that have outsized
| power vs. an individual citizen (corporations, wealthy
| magnates, etc).
| afh1 wrote:
| Government has by far and wide the most "outsized power" v.
| a corporation or wealthy citizen... It does not "exercise
| the will of the people", it forcefully imposes that of
| their rulers.
|
| https://rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd/phil215/Nozick.pdf
| appstorelottery wrote:
| Communication protocols _and_ file formats IMHO.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| but.. file systems
| daniel_iversen wrote:
| As much as I think big tech sometimes abuses their power and
| leverage unfair advantages we shouldn't stifle innovation by
| requiring everything to be totally open from the get go. If
| there's zero switching costs to go to a competitor then what's
| the incentives for companies to spent a lot of money and time
| building a product? It'd be very risky (especially for small
| players actually) and they'll have to do "safe" incremental
| functionality until they have a larger user base and can afford
| to invest in R&D because it's less likely many of their users
| will leave all at once. It's the same reason why we have
| patents for things - to incentivise the investment in R&D.
| Maybe there could be a threshold for time+revenue+users that
| trigger the need for openness? Same should be true for social
| networks and when we can/should set a higher bar for holding
| them responsible for abuse on their platform I feel.
| phh wrote:
| > Government should just require open communication
| protocols/file formats, if a competitor is willing to host the
| same data at cost.
|
| Well, that's what happened with the "Office Open XML" standard,
| which has been a catastrophe. Microsoft perfectly handled every
| country to have their ISO standard pass. Even though it was in
| violation of ISO requirements, which many countries voiced.
| Those complaints "somehow" disappeared. The fact that at ISO
| you're not allowed to divulge who is paid by which company
| might be related. Or maybe not. Either way, IMO, the conclusion
| is that you can't delegate democratic functions to a non-
| democratic organization.
|
| But I wholeheartedly agree with you on the principle.
| Interoperability brings innovation and competition. Not lock-
| ins/walled gardens. And interoperability requires standards not
| ""technical specification"" which is the new slang for
| oligopoly.
| TheCycoONE wrote:
| Why are the tying laws not enforced in the US, or Canada, or the
| many other jurisdictions where it's illegal for a monopoly to tie
| products together; and why does it not apply to the tying of Word
| and Excel or other apps in the Office suite that use to be sold
| independently and complete with independent products (Lotus 123,
| Wordperfect)
| Jerry2 wrote:
| > _Why are the tying laws not enforced in the US, or Canada_
|
| Regulatory capture and legalized corruption aka "lobbying".
| datadeft wrote:
| No shit. The only real surprise is that it took years for gov
| officials to recognize this. On the other hand, Teams is the
| worst thing that could have happened to work communication
| efficiency.
| ohcmon wrote:
| Needed Word on Mac - you can't imagine how surprised I was to see
| Skype starting too.
| antihero wrote:
| When a company's initial interview is on Teams I see it as a bad
| sign. If a company forces you to use Windows for your dev machine
| it's a red flag.
|
| If a company forces you to use a Citrix instance for your dev
| machine honestly run away screaming and take your sanity with
| you.
| tombert wrote:
| I've had a few interviews that use Teams, but I've always just
| used the browser version, and it worked fine on a Mac and Linux
| last time I tried it.
| antihero wrote:
| You can do that, but if you get the job you'll likely be
| having to use it for a lot more stuff. It's a sign of a
| culture that wants to bundle stuff up and manage it in the
| corporate way as opposed to using the tools that people want
| to use to do their job.
| dudeinhawaii wrote:
| Awesome, now do Adobe and Autodesk next. How is Creative Cloud
| not an anti-competitive bundle under the same description? Why do
| we ignore the particularly egregious exploiters of customers?
| Should Apple computers not have messenger built in? Should Google
| Workspace remove Meet? What are the actual rules because they
| seem to just apply to whomever the EU wants to shake down any
| given year.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Office is bad enough. One reason we're stuck with the very bad
| Excel (gives wrong answers) is that you got Office because you
| want to use less offensive products like Word and Powerpoint so
| you already bought Excel.
| drewcoo wrote:
| If the EU is working on a time machine, Lotus Notes might be
| their next target!
| jimnotgym wrote:
| It is a common comment on HN to say Teams is rubbish and also to
| ask why anyone would use it. Now we have a problem of market
| dominance, which demonstrates by how far the HN bubble
| misunderstands how ordinary people do their day to day business.
| This is the vacuum MS have been consistently winning in for
| several decades now, it would be worth you understanding it.
|
| Now someone is about to reply that market dominance doesn't mean
| your app is best. If you think that in this case then you are
| still missing the lesson. Teams integrates with Windows OS, Azure
| AD, SharePoint, OneDrive, PowerPoint and Outlook in a way that is
| so much more useful to ordinary people than anything the other
| messengers do. Much of that integration is available to any app
| developer but they choose not to use them so continue to fall
| behind. Sure there will be some things Slack are not currently
| getting an API for, but so so much more that they don't use but
| could, because they don't see why it is important for users.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| > choose not to use them
|
| This is definitely a problem in general for the open-source /
| Silicon Valley crowd.
|
| In this case however the integrations you describe aren't
| possible for a third party.
|
| Microsoft has made it absurdly difficult to extend and
| integrate with Office, and they regularly use anti-competitive
| (and anti-consumer!) methods to "push" new products via first-
| party integration.
|
| A random example: One drive is the default save location in MS
| Office apps. This can't be turned off or customised back to
| local files by end-users. I have to jump through hoops every
| time I save a file because some product manager at Microsoft
| has a KPI tied their bonus.
| antihero wrote:
| Anecdotal but pretty much everyone I know that's not in tech
| also fucking hates Teams too.
|
| Microsoft win contracts decided by decision makers at the top
| of large companies.
|
| Companies like Slack win contracts decided by actual users in
| companies that listen to them.
| gregors wrote:
| It isn't just that Teams integrates well with the Windows
| world, it's that managers were already paying for 365, and now
| they're getting this additional app for free. Why pay for this
| other app you've been paying for previously? Don't discount the
| pure effectiveness of giving that away.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| Teams is a pain in the neck! If you make an office calendar
| appointment for a zoom, Microsoft "helps" you by creating a teams
| invite in the text of the invitation that gets sent out. So there
| is always a chance someone you invite will click on the wrong
| link to be in the meeting. If you ever click on this link
| yourself teams will install on your system and try in the run in
| the background every time you boot your computer.
|
| This is just hostile to the consumer. If I want teams I can
| install it.
| htrp wrote:
| The zombie corpse of slack welcomes this ruling
| xzjis wrote:
| The problem is that it's already too late. In my company, we used
| Teams because it was "free" (they even added a free version that
| lasted between COVID-19 and 2023), bundled with everything else,
| and now that we have to pay for Teams alone, we won't consider
| switching to something else because people are used to Teams. We
| never considered an alternative, and we will never consider one,
| and it's just more expensive for us now (which is Microsoft's way
| of complying with EU's rules, so Microsoft's fault).
|
| Antitrusts are too slow to happen.
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