EU launches antitrust investigation of Microsoft over bundling Teams with Office

No one would use Teams if it wasn't bundled together with other stuff.

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I absolutely agree : our company used slack, Google docs, and self-hosted exchange.

Eventually, MS forced us to replace our self-hosted exchange for MS' cloud solution. This was basically a ramrod for shoveling O365 and having it replace Slack with Teams and Google Docs with O365.

The migration was painful... going from "I have the exact tools I need for the job" to "jebus, this is the best MS has? On Teams I can only see 4 people at the same time? What was MS thinking".

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- Not sure why yours doesn’t let you see more than 4 people. I’m in a call with 12 and I see them all. That being said, Google docs, etc. beats Word and Excel hands down in the area of collaboration and a few other minor points. I hate being stuck in one ecosystem that way.
  
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- Serious question, I don't get the "forced" part. Could you clarify this for me?
  
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- My company only uses Teams and it works fine from what I can tell, what's so bad about it?
  
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Yeah. There must be tons of places that would choose Slack, or another alternative, over Teams if they weren’t getting Teams bundled into a piece they were already paying.

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Let me disagree. My workplace is deep in ms "stuff" - dotnet development + other windows only stuff. Honestly, I got to use a lot of sw for online meetings due to c-19. Well, teams is as shitty as the others. Or good as the others. Depends on what you like to hear. I got used to it, and it does what it must almost always; very often what it should do. I've to say something more, but I don't want to look like a fanboy or similar.

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I can understand Teams in Office, particularly O365 for organizations… what I don’t get is Teams being mandatory in Windows 11…

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Seriously you can't have windows without having teams now?

I have a feeling when I finish rebuilding my gaming PC I'm not going to be a fan of using windows again...

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- A lot of us use Linux for gaming now. Supports almost all games. But for God's sake, pick a amd graphics card if you plan to do Linux gaming. Nvidia is buggy as hell.
  
  https://www.protondb.com/explore
  
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- I have been using windows exclusively for 20 years now but just made the switch to Linux (EndeavourOS - an arch distro) 1 week ago and I couldn't be happier!
  
  99% of all applications that I use work just as well (including games) and for the very very few that won't work (like Valorant) I am using a dual boot setup. The reason that I made the switch was that I got anxious with W10 EOL approaching since I would rather stop using windows altogether than using W11.
  
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- When can I get an iPhone without iMessage being preinstalled? Microsoft is, if anything, late to the party on this kind of anti-user BS.
  
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- I personally do a ton of game streaming to my Steam Deck which is my main driver for using Windows as it works better with NVIDIA Shield + Moonlight, but I highly recommend you give Pop!OS a try. I'm very pro-linux, but for the longest time it just wasn't there for gaming and I didn't recommend it. With Valve going full steam ahead for the Steam Deck, Proton has gotten so good that for 95% of games things just work out of the box without any issue. Wine even has support for Easy Anti Cheat now and more features are coming every week.
  
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- Seriously you can’t have windows without having teams now?
  
  you can just uninstall it
  
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- It can be uninstalled.
  
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- (Whoops replied to the wrong commenter.)
  
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If they would also investigate Apple for forcing Safari on iOS

I would be so happy

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They already have: https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/26/apple_ios_browser/

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I'm not an expert on EU antitrust but these things seem like they naturally go together. After all, Outlook comes with Office, right? Is that not a communication and collaboration tool?

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Well.. that depends on who you ask. Some say that Teams being a part of the bundle is anti competitive (which it is). Outlook used to be only a mail client, so it made sense when it was part of the Office package, as one thing that an Office user needs, is an email client. Exchange servers had to be hosted by the company. However nowadays, you get the client and the infra for a subscription based model so it was kind of grandfathered in, I guess. If I as a company say I'm not interested in Teams and want to not pay for it as I do not plan to use it, msft will tell me it's not possible. Therefore, businesses like Slack can never succeed because I as a company will never look at alternatives if I already get a messaging app built into my Office suite.

I dunno, I'm just mumbo jumbing really and not a lawyer (or an EU citizen, for that matter). I just hate Teams.

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- I think this is a great explanation. Teams really is anti competitive and the way you laid it out made that easier for me to understand.
  
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- Therefore, businesses like Slack can never succeed because I as a company will never look at alternatives if I already get a messaging app built into my Office suite.
  
  I'd like to see evidence of this, because I don't really believe it in practice. In my experience Office is always installed, but that doesn't stop companies from also using Google sheets and docs as well, shit I worked somewhere that used Lotus Notes too. Multiple video call services were used at my last job, Zoom and Workplace. I've got multiple types of SQL databases that I use daily, SQL Server, Postgres, Oracle, and even sometimes Access which is included in the Office suite. Companies love redundancy.
  
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Yes. If they argued that oh no, we can't have excel in office. That's just too many products bundled together, I'd be pissed

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That's kinda what I'm thinking. It's just a new app that is part of Microsoft Office but also available standalone. Pretty sure you can also just... not install it during Office install, just like all of the other apps. They all work independently of each other.

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- Except Outlook only lets you add Teams meetings to appointments, not Zoom, for example. Teams is prioritised in several other parts of MS Office suite
  
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Totally agree. Teams may not be the most fun messaging app. But to me it's a part of the office package.

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I'm no big fan of MS. And even if I were, using Teams would make that praise fall in the shitter

But I'm tired of these groups arguing that something should be less complete as a good thing

Why doesn't Yamaha sue Honda for including their own radio in the car? And surely customers would be irritated that they had to go and get another fucking radio

If I buy "Office Suite" I want it to have all the products included. If I think teams sucks I can get something else

If they make it difficult for that, like they did with IE, that's a different story. But merely including it? Come on

They tried that shit with antivirus. I'm GLAD MS includes defender. If I had to get all that shit separately, I'd be irritated. And if I don't like defender, I'm free to get something else

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I use a lot of MS products. But when they try to trick me into using their browser every time I update, I have to dig through settings to remove Teams,and I have to install a third party app to choose the browser and search engine used from search bar, it's clear they're running amok

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- Well that's the kind of shit I was talking about with actual issues. It's annoying
  
  Same in edge where it keeps trying to enable recommendations and other trash. Even now on my phone it keeps trying to send notifications to get me to use bing chat gpt. You're a glorified wallpaper rotation, gtfo
  
  I keep edge as my default for work. It's just easier with the typical shitty intranet that breaks down if you use a different browser
  
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- Windows search bar or the one in Edge?
  
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Because it’s more important for businesses to be able to compete for your eyeballs than it is for you to get a usable product out of the box.

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First, it's not a very good analogy. Second, you can put a different radio in your car; you can't remove Teams without removing all of Office. Third, people would be pretty mad at Honda if their cars shipped with a piece of shit radio instead of something at least nice.

Edit: I take back the part about uninstalling Teams. You can do that. I was thinking of Skype for Business.

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- Teams without removing all of Office.
  
  Do you mean specifically on 11? Because on 10 you absolutely can.
  
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Now do google and DRM

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How is pairing two of their own products together even a trust/monopoly issue?

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Other chat companies would have great difficulty competing when Teams is bundled with Office 365.

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- It's not bundled is it? Functionality comes with the licence. For example our teams usage is dependant on our Office 365 E5 licencing, which costs money. Word comes bundled with office yet no complaints. Google spreadsheet comes bundled with google workspace.
  
  It's also got native integrations with SharePoint, Azure, windows and anything Microsoft. And even then the functionality and user experience is alot better than the competitors. I hate WebEx with a passion.
  
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In General, using a part of your business that's on top to boost another part of your business that is not is typically seen as anti-competitive. Office is clearly the market leader, but Teams isn't.

IMO, the EU needs to do with Edge and Office. There is now a toggle in Outlook that ignores your default browser and opens everything in Edge. It's ridiculous.

4

It's certainly not wrong to take a look into Microsoft and its subscription business, but I don't see much success in pressing this particular point: Not only was there always some sort of free version of Teams since 2018, but since 2022 there has been a Teams Essentials subscription, a version that doesn't bundle O356.

If anything I'd like some compensation for the loss in sanity you get trying to understand the dozen different subscriptions and (incompatible) versions of Teams, all of which are confusingly named.

9

I’m all into inspecting big companies like Microsoft but this seems a little bit like, over reacting?

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They relentlessly try to coerce us into using their browser, messaging, and Bing using windows. They undermine developers of apps like Firefox who try to sidestep their restrictions. They clearly need to be reined in

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- Yeah, but Teams in Office? Is that really the main problem?
  
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I remember a similar case regarding Windows shipping with IE. Whatever happened with that?

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They added a browser choice window to Windows 7 where you could select and download a web browser to install. It isn't present in Windows 10 and on, possibly wasn't in 8 either.

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- It's because you can uninstall Edge now so they don't need the browser choice thing.
  
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Because there's nothing better. Not for lack of trying, of course, but because Office is such the juggernaut it's hard to iterate on it while also keeping up with current features.

Note: I'm talking for business/finance, etc work, not home work where LibreOffice and OnlyOffice are perfectly cromulent.

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Ah the ol' bundle Windows95 with Internet Explorer trick.

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Eu commission : Let's pretend we're are really going to change something 😜 !

Us, the spectators : Oh thank gosh, the EU is the one standing up to Big corporations 👍.

Microsoft : Stop bullying us EU 😭 , we are going to complain to daddy US of Arms again .

US of Arms: Hey EU, 😡 How about I remind you who is the World Boss !

EU Commission: Oh sorry sorry, I will tell my big sister the High court to take your side , BFFs again ?! 🤗 🤗

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The EU is actually standing up to tech giants: usb-c everywhere, removable batteries in 2027, GDPR and the list goes on and on

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- Free mobile phone roaming in EU
  
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- These concessions are nothing compared to how the EU neutred and went around their own Legislation and The EU High court rulling on The Privacy shield, and the Illegality of Transfers of EU Citizens data to the US
  
  Remember all the fuss about Meta (Facebook , Instagram , Whatsapp) leaving the EU if they can't send users data back to the US. Who did bend at the end ??? The EU.
  
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- And chat control! We get it all!
  
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I posted about this here hours ago.

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Ok

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