EU Charges Microsoft With 'Abusive' Bundling of Teams and Office, Breaching Antitrust Rules (cnbc.com) 51
The European Union on Tuesday accused Microsoft
of breaching antitrust rules with the "abusive" bundling of its Teams and Office products. From a report: "The European Commission has informed Microsoft of its preliminary view that Microsoft has breached EU antitrust rules by tying its communication and collaboration product Teams to its popular productivity applications included in its suites for businesses Office 365 and Microsoft 365," the European Commission -- the EU's executive arm -- said in a Statement of Objections, which is sent to inform companies of concerns raised against them. If the commission decides that an infringement has taken place once companies have responded, it can ban the conduct and fine the charged company up to 10% of its global revenue.
Microsoft this year took the preemptive step to unbundle Teams from Microsoft 365 in an effort to quash antitrust concerns by the EU. However, the commission said in its Tuesday statement that the changes were "insufficient to address its concerns and that more changes to Microsoft's conduct are necessary to restore competition." Microsoft said it would work to find solutions to address the commission's additional concerns.
Microsoft this year took the preemptive step to unbundle Teams from Microsoft 365 in an effort to quash antitrust concerns by the EU. However, the commission said in its Tuesday statement that the changes were "insufficient to address its concerns and that more changes to Microsoft's conduct are necessary to restore competition." Microsoft said it would work to find solutions to address the commission's additional concerns.
Fucking Thank God (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of why teams is so popular is that it gets bonus'd into any microsoft contract where the customer has anything less than wild exuberance for the product.
Then management tries to get us to extract maximum value for their foolish decision making. Make microsoft stop that garbage. Teams (for dipshits) is fucking trash (for garbage or recycling)
Re:Fucking Thank God (Score:4, Insightful)
Despite the spicy language, Microsoft was sued for this behavior decades ago. Back then it was for bundling Internet Expoder (tm) with Windows, to prevent competitors from entering the browser market. More than one browser vendor died as a result. They wiggled out of it, but it took 10 years and a big bag of lawyer-dollars to escape. Opinions vary as to whether they should have been allowed to escape, but the point is, they've done this before and it's unsurprising to us old-dogs that they're trying it again.
Re:Fucking Thank God (Score:4, Insightful)
Back then it was for bundling Internet Expoder (tm) with Windows, to prevent competitors from entering the browser market. More than one browser vendor died as a result
You're not wrong about the history with IE but how does the bundling of Teams adversely impact any would be competitor? A better analogy would be what Microsoft is currently doing with Edge, which is frankly obnoxious, but that's a different topic. I have the opposite beef you do with regards to Teams. My organization got into Slack and Zoom during the pandemic and pays a FUCK TON of money for functionality that is duplicated in Teams, which we already had, except prior to my arrival there was no professional IT and that was the hook Zoom and Slack used to addict our users on their inferior products.
In my humble opinion, Teams offers superior video quality, so it handily matches/beats Zoom at its primary use case, and if you're so inclined you can leverage the Sharepoint integration for easier collaboration with your colleagues. It's closer to a match with Slack from the user's perspective, except, from the admin's perspective Microsoft has superior audit and compliance tools.
At least Slack doesn't bend us over for the stupid amount of money Zoom thinks their product is worth. Our Slack bill isn't worth the training burden/user annoyance of switching. Our Zoom bill absolutely is and it will go away as soon as I can get leadership buy in for the transition.
My organization gives Zoom roughly 2.5 times the amount of money we give Microsoft. Zoom does exactly one thing and (IMHO) does it worse than Teams. Microsoft gives us a complete office suite, an MDM, identity management, e-mail, blah, blah, blah.
My main beef with Teams is it's bloatware. The updated version is somewhat better in this regard but in terms of memory and (to a lesser extent) CPU usage it's a pig for what it does. A lesser beef is the fact that it unhelpfully auto-starts and most of my users do not want that behavior. If the EU wanted to do something useful they'd make auto-start an OPT IN process for ALL applications rather than an OPT OUT one.
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You're not wrong about the history with IE but how does the bundling of Teams adversely impact any would be competitor? ....
I have the opposite beef you do with regards to Teams. My organization got into Slack and Zoom during the pandemic and pays a FUCK TON of money for functionality that is duplicated in Teams, which we already had, except prior to my arrival there was no professional IT and that was the hook Zoom and Slack used to addict our users on their inferior products.
Uhh this is exactly how it hurts competition. MS bundles it with Office, which is the dominant product on the market that everyone has.
Sure your company got Zoom for whatever reason (maybe kickbacks, who knows) but generally this makes it extremely difficult for anyone to compete, whether or not you think it's better. I mean I personally hate Zoom and Slack just as much as Teams but that's besides the point.
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Google bundles Google Meet with Workspaces. Why isn't the EU turning their ire on them? The bundling doesn't FORCE you to use Teams, as my organization clearly demonstrates. If you're arguing it's an unfair advantage, because Teams is "free" (more accurately, included) while Zoom costs money, well, there's some small amount of truth to that, but how do you draw that line? Exactly what functionality included within Office is "too much" for the Brusselcrats?
Zoom, like Teams, includes phone functionality.
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once your company manages to hire a competent finance department, they will see these redundancies in cost and maximize profits by forcing the use of the bundled product that they are already paying for. because teams is not a free product only free with a bundle.
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I work for a non-profit that is disinclined to force all employees into a particular solution solely on the basis of cost. *shrug*
Still waiting for someone to tell me exactly how the EU should draw the line with regards to bundling. Teams bundled into Office is problematic but Google Meet into Workspaces is not? Why is it okay to bundle Word/Docs and Excel/Sheets? Or should those be forcibly separated too? WordPerfect has more of a historical beef against Microsoft (they refused to release APIs for Win
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> Teams bundled into Office is problematic but Google Meet into Workspaces is not?
Yeah I've never even heard of that. I'm sure it's garbage as Google is fast track to shooting straight past being the new Microsoft and then off to becoming the next IBM but Microsoft practically invented these practices and lives and dies by them and basically nuked all the smaller software shops putting out anything decent for two decades with their shitty practices.
I couldn't tell you who fucked the information revoluti
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Jeez do you really need someone to explain basic competition law? A monopolist or dominant player can use bundling to force their competition out. I'm not a lawyer so you can check the actual legislation here:
'Tyingâ(TM) usually refers to situations where customers that ...
purchase one product (the tying product) are required also
to purchase another product from the dominant under-
taking (the tied product). Tying can take place on a tech-
nical or contractual basis ( 2). âBundlingâ(TM) usually refers to the
way products are offered and priced by the dominant
undertaking.
The Commission will normally take action under Article 82
where an undertaking is dominant in the tying market ( 3)
and where, in addition, the following conditions are
fulfilled: (i) the tying and tied products are distinct products,
and (ii) the tying practice is likely to lead to anti-competi-
tive foreclosure ( 4 ).
https://competition-policy.ec.... [europa.eu]
(page 186)
Nobody gives a shit about Google Workspace because they don't have a monopoly.
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I'm doing lots of slack integrations right now and it's just fucking mind blowing that we stopped using XMPP and IRC for that shit. It's like pulling teeth.
BONUS: I had to clear API access with security because we could be putting sensitive information out to vendors. Like LOL! Fucking what do you think SaaS is? We could be self hosting IRC for our entire enterprise with HA and it would cost us peanuts. Literally half the internet was chatting on set of servers with the capacity of my old cellphone dra
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You're asking
You're not wrong about the history with IE but how does the bundling of Teams adversely impact any would be competitor? A
and then you go on to talk about how Zoom is too expensive
if you're so inclined you can leverage the Sharepoint integration for easier collaboration with your colleagues.
Everyone who uses sharepoint at my office is a fucking idiot and the people I actually want to collaborate with use other tools.
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but how does the bundling of Teams adversely impact any would be competitor?
My organization got into Slack and Zoom during the pandemic and pays a FUCK TON of money for functionality that is duplicated in Teams
Hm... Do you ever go back over what you wrote and try to reconcile all of your words? If so, why didn't you catch this? Both concepts are from the same paragraph. You can see it but you can't see it. It is a little hilarious in a way. I would laugh, but I don't want you to feel ridiculed as we all have done this before.
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Dumb take. It's quick and integrated with the existing environment. It serves an important function for modern knowledge workers. If your management is trying to get you to do things it's not meant to do, that's an issue with your organization.
Yes and no. The question isn't the benefits of integration, the question is the complete impossibility of purchasing a version of Office without it. It doesn't matter how good it is, the fact of the matter is when you have the market influence that Office has you're not free to bundle applications blindly in a competitive marketplace.
That's the very point of antitrust. When you have power, some of your actions have significant market influence. I sell something below cost as a promotion to get a bit of mark
Go back to bed Satya (Score:1)
Microsoft should be on a corporate blacklist but inertia and ignorance keep it going.
Sure getting away from it is unrealistic but at least talk about their stuff like it's trash instead of being like Maybeeee there's some value and synergies because of..
We can't get away from MS but that's a net loss for, I dunno, fucking everything.
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I guess expecting you to read the whole summary is too much? This is just the EU deciding that the communication part of worker productivity doesn't count as Productivity, so those of us actually taking care of our users now get extra steps to go through.
I just skipped over the irrelevant parts. You realise you can't uncommit crimes right? Pre-emptive unbundling doesn't absolve them from their antitrust violation.
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the question is the complete impossibility of purchasing a version of Office without it
Does that likewise apply to being unable to purchase Google Workspace without Google Meet? I've never used Google Meet. I frequently use Sheets. Can I get Meet unbundled?
You can buy standalone versions of the individual office apps if that's your jam. Here's Word [microsoft.com].
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Does that likewise apply to being unable to purchase Google Workspace without Google Meet?
Yes it should.
You can buy standalone versions of the individual office apps if that's your jam. Here's Word [microsoft.com].
a) you can also get Office without Teams. Now. Now is not relevant. The case is related to something which has happened, not something that is current.
b) the issue isn't that you couldn't buy singular apps. It's that everyone who had an Office subscription suddenly had an app forced on them during renewal without an opt out. You at the time could not buy Office without teams. Buying the individual apps costs almost the same as buying the full Office suite. Incidentally predatory pricing when y
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It's meant to run at an acceptable performance level. They coded their desktop app with Javascript, though, and badly at that. Sure, computers are fast - but running it at the same time as any other software is going to degrade the real work.
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Lmao Teams is trash management wants us to use it as intended and it's trash and brings nothing new to the table, and it's trash.
I have like 3 other things provided by the company that perform similar functions, they're all trash but Teams (for dumpsters) is the trashiest.
Missed before (Score:1)
quick
Oh jesus fuck give me a break.
Re: Fucking Thank God (Score:2)
The problem with teams is that it's shit. The UI is bad, AND the software is unreliable. Same with pretty much everything Microsoft of course. It's embarrassing how addicted to Microsoft government is.
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Yep. I do passive streaming of my lectures with Teams (university policy). The times it has screwed things up are numerous and surprising. I also use it for direct communication and just yesterday it simply froze. PoS wannabe-ware.
Re:F$cking Thank God (Score:1)
I agree, Teams is one of the worst pile's of Shitware I've ever seen. There is no way in hell it would sell as an independent product. Bundling is the only way to move it. Employees eventually learn their way around its oddities and it thus becomes good enough, but it's a hell of a learning curve to get there.
Great job EU! (Score:2, Insightful)
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That strongly reminds me of that quote with "happy slaves" ...
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So you are fine with being a slave? Nice! Rational people are willing to invest extra effort to avoid that.
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So you are fine with being a slave? Nice! Rational people are willing to invest extra effort to avoid that.
DEEP BREATH: We're like, all slaves man. Just gotta, like, ya know, pick your masters and live with it, bro. *PASSES JOINT*
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Sure. To some degree. But being happy about it? That is just wrong.
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Sure. To some degree. But being happy about it? That is just wrong.
I'm reminded of my buddy who's CEO came out to the floor to give a speech and then went on for twenty minutes about pigs being happy to go to the slaughterhouse, then trying to get the warehouse folks to start chanting that they all wanted to "be the pig." Some actually joined in, while a few walked off the job. There's always those happy to be slaves. I can't wrap my head around it, but it'd make my grandpappy say, "Thank goodness we're all different, or we'd be in a hell of a mess.\' Uh, yeah, pops. About
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Well, that is disturbing. Apparently some people are really fundamentally broken. Explains quite a bit though.
Well, "malicious compliance" can be expensive (Score:3)
And unlike the joke that "antitrust" is in the US, the EU version has teeth. Good. Capitalism degrades fast and eventually goes to hell without some effective regulation. MS software "quality" and software "security" is a sign of that.
I don't care the reason (Score:2)
Teams installing itself and setting itself to autostart is already so annoying, it needs to be illegal. If we have to pass new laws, so be it.
How soon we forget (Score:2)
Now comes along a story about Microsoft doing essentially the same thing and there are people whining that if Teams is fully separated from Office, that will mean more work for them. Oh, and Teams works well with Office and Windows so what's the big deal?
So which
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Other than both being unfair business practices I would say they're distinctly different simply on the fact that is about MS and only MS and the customers.
The Apple case involves developers who occupy these interesting place where they are both customers of Apple and vendors to Apples customers who are dealing with two parties for purchases effectively.
Not sure how I feel on either these but they do feel like two different issues for me.
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So which is it? Either forcing a company to make it easier for competitors to compete is a good thing or it's not.
For anybody that actually understands what a market is, this is a good thing. A lot of people lack that fundamental understanding though.
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My vote is that it is not.
Imagine if the Olympics punished faster and stronger people so that puny weaklings would compete on a more equal basis. People would be outraged.
Fuck the EU and it's money grab.
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Sorry, I forgot to jack into the hivemind, so I'm not sure which it's meant to be.
Seriously though there are a lot of different people with a lot of different opinions. Maybe you should ask individuals who have different opinions on both why they think things are different, rather than making out like everyone is an identical idiot because you read two two different opinions...
Force the de-enshittification of Windows (Score:4, Insightful)
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People already have multiple choices apart from Windows, they just don't know or don't care.
The minority who does and still uses Windows will have to endure it.
Microsoft needs to be split up (Score:4, Insightful)
There's no other way. They know they have the corporate desktop and desktop gamers in the pocket. They will keep pulling this abusive shit until Microsoft is broken up in many, many smaller pieces and Windows is forcibly made FOSS in its entirety.
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Sooner or later Microsoft will bin their creaky old NT kernel and switch to Linux.
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They will keep pulling this abusive shit until Microsoft is broken up in many, many smaller pieces and Windows is forcibly made FOSS in its entirety.
Microsoft will be made into a quasi-governmental entity rather than being broken up. The "Intelligence" capabilities can not and will not be ignored. (they (whomever thinks they have authority over you, in my case multiple layers of USA style government) want to spy on you)