Microsoft To Unbundle Teams From Office, Seeks To Avert EU Antitrust Fine (reuters.com) 21
Microsoft will unbundle its chat and video app Teams from its Office suite and make it easier for rival products to work with its software, the U.S. company said on Thursday in a move aimed at staving off a possible EU antitrust fine. From a report: The proposed changes came a month after the European Commission launched an investigation into Microsoft's tying of Office and Teams following a complaint by Salesforce-owned workspace messaging app Slack in 2020. Microsoft's preliminary concessions failed to address concerns. The EU competition enforcer on Thursday said it took note of the company's announcement and declined further comment.
Teams was added to Office 365 in 2017 for free. It eventually replaced Skype for Business and gained in popularity during the pandemic due in part to its video conferencing. "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," [...] The changes, effective from Oct. 1, will apply in Europe and Switzerland.
Teams was added to Office 365 in 2017 for free. It eventually replaced Skype for Business and gained in popularity during the pandemic due in part to its video conferencing. "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," [...] The changes, effective from Oct. 1, will apply in Europe and Switzerland.
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Well it gives 'Not Teams' a fighting change in the worlds second or third largest market territory. There are plenty of EU only businesses, to make a Teams competitor viable.
However I would argue its this kind of anti-free trade policy the EU always gets a pass on but someone if the USA does it, the pearl clutchers around the world come out in force.
Teams is a logical component to bundle into an Office suite. Its a lot more narrow in application and feature related than say bundling a web browser with your
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Teams is a logical component to bundle into an Office suite.
No, it isn't. Teams is collaboration software. Office is document software. Different things.
Its a lot more narrow in application and feature related than say bundling a web browser with your operating system was (at least in 1997).
Which the EU also (correctly) said was restraint of trade.
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Teams is a logical component to bundle into an Office suite.
No, it isn't. Teams is collaboration software. Office is document software. Different things.
Outlook would like to have a word with you.
Its a lot more narrow in application and feature related than say bundling a web browser with your operating system was (at least in 1997).
Which the EU also (correctly) said was restraint of trade.
Which is why the person you're quoting said it's a lot more narrow in application than that situation.
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Teams is a logical component to bundle into an Office suite.
No, it isn't. Teams is collaboration software. Office is document software. Different things.
Outlook would like to have a word with you.
Its a lot more narrow in application and feature related than say bundling a web browser with your operating system was (at least in 1997).
Which the EU also (correctly) said was restraint of trade.
Which is why the person you're quoting said it's a lot more narrow in application than that situation.
Outlook as well should not be bundled as it's communication/collaboration software. There are plenty of alternatives but thanks to Microsoft changing how Exchange emails are handled, they require adjustments (such as Owl for Exchange with Thunderbird) rather than simply using IMAP.
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There are plenty of alternatives but thanks to Microsoft changing how Exchange emails are handled, they require adjustments (such as Owl for Exchange with Thunderbird) rather than simply using IMAP.
You don't have to use MAPI if you don't want to--Exchange will happily serve your email to you via IMAP if that's what you want. It'll do POP3, too.
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Their authentication fuckery prevents me from using Mail on my phone for my uni e-mail anyway, it only works on my laptop.
That's likely be Exchange Online, not on-prem. In the cloud products, yeah, Microsoft is doing their damnedest to do away with as many insecure* protocols as possible.
*Sure, encrypted POP and IMAP connections exist, but they don't support MFA, so by today's standards they're insecure.
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Of course you're right.
I mean, who in their right mind would want to collaborate over documents....?
amiright or what?
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Office is document software.
Disagree. Office is business-application-software. It is a suite of common software applications that cover the needs of running most businesses (or "offices" -hence the name). A suite of software is defined by how well it's components integrate with one another, and how similar the interface is in each.
That said, I see no reason why Office should not have a "basic" set of applications that most people use sold as a unit, and split off optional packages that integrate additional features dependent on the
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Well, now that the damage is done to 'Not Teams', MS can unbundle to try to stay out of court without losing much market share.
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it's a $2 discount for getting Office without Teams?
Well given that Teams is worthless it's a pretty steep discount.
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The biggest problem with it is you now have to pay attention to two applications where you might get information, mail and teams.
I prefer to use mail for it, if only because it is easier to search and organise for messages.
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Or, Slack could, and hear me out here... charge a reasonable price for their service.
Slack starts at $7.25/user/mo, but realistically, businesses are going to go for the $12.50/user/mo option for the user ID sync.
Office 365 business standard is $12.50/user/mo for Office apps, email, Sharepoint, Teams, Azure AD, and one TB of storage per user in OneDrive.
Whether Microsoft's services are any good or not is well open for debate, but Slack needs to slash its prices if they want to compete. This legal action fr
I welcome alternatives, Teams sucks (Score:3)
Having used Teams for years in an enterprise environment, I despise it. It is absolutely useless as a text chat client, especially for sharing code snippets. It took years to stabilize even basic features. Video conferencing works ok but is unpleasant overall. Searching through conversations and organizing content is a nightmare.
But the worst thing is that almost every single enterprise here in Sweden has gone all-in on Microsoft. The selection process is no longer based on merit, but on "free as in sunk cost", so the "free beer" argument for FOSS software is no longer working.
And the general Windows experience is just deteriorating on top of that. So I welcome anything to make alternatives more viable. At this point, Microsoft is "old iron" and the reason it is chosen often seems to be "nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft".
Today I was told to completely power off my laptop before putting it in my backpack. Because apparently sleep does not work on Windows 10. It has worked on every other laptop I had, from my X41 Thinkpad running Linux back in 2005 to my HP ZBook running Windows 7 at my last workplace.
Linus Tech Tips made a video about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Apparently it is not a bug, but a feature!
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Teams...
Auto-start by default, unless you sign in to turn that off. And it continually pops up in front of the stuff you really want to load first.
It needs ~500mb cache space to launch, often 1.5GB while running... which is ridiculous and causes a lot of issues if you're running a terminal server or Citrix farm.
Speaking of farms, Teams insists on installing in the individual user profiles. The Teams "machine-wide installer" just adds a central repository to build those individual sessions from, and breaks
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Teams...
Auto-start by default, unless you sign in to turn that off. And it continually pops up in front of the stuff you really want to load first.
Don't get me started on this... I had to put teams on one of my personal laptops for job interviews and I won't sign in because I don't want a personal account associated with teams. Since I'm not doing interviews any more I've removed it, rather than having to disable it every time I use teams (yep, if you use Teams it will set itself to auto-start on login even if you've disabled it).
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Having used Teams for years in an enterprise environment, I despise it. It is absolutely useless as a text chat client, especially for sharing code snippets. It took years to stabilize even basic features. Video conferencing works ok but is unpleasant overall. Searching through conversations and organizing content is a nightmare.
But the worst thing is that almost every single enterprise here in Sweden has gone all-in on Microsoft. The selection process is no longer based on merit, but on "free as in sunk cost", so the "free beer" argument for FOSS software is no longer working.
Same here,
For years companies have been flocking to teams because Microsoft gave it out for free, now this looks to be the prelude of MS starting to charge for it.