Microsoft To Adjust Office-Teams Pricing in Bid To Avoid EU Antitrust Fine (reuters.com) 21
An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft has offered to widen the price differential between its Office product sold with its chat and video app Teams and its software sold without the app in a bid to avert a possible EU antitrust fine, according to three sources. The move by the U.S. tech giant comes five years after Salesforce-owned Slack complained to the European Commission about Microsoft's tying of Teams with Office. In 2023, German rival alfaview filed a similar grievance to the EU watchdog. Teams, which was added to Office 365 in 2017 for free and eventually replaced Skype for Business, became popular during the pandemic due in part to its video conferencing.
Mixed Feelings (Score:4, Interesting)
What I mean is that Word and Excel really have nothing to do with one another. And Outlook has little to do with either. But we accept that "Office" as a bundle of those three is acceptable. Here, have some PowerPoint. Maybe Publisher is in there and maybe Access. All that this has in common is "stuff useful to an office worker."
Seems to me these days screen-sharing and meetings are part of the evolving office. So why shouldn't it be okay to add that functionality to Office? I get it, Slack doesn't like the idea. Nor do Zoom and TeamViewer. But... maybe this ubiquitous activity where standalone competitors don't make a whole lot of sense. Nobody's really working on an Excel-killer because there's no point.
I'm interested in other folks' thoughts on this because I'm just not sure where I come down on this decision.
Re: Mixed Feelings (Score:2)
"Word and Excel really have nothing to do with one another. And Outlook has little to do with either."
What they have in common is that at one point Microsoft was using secret APIs for office, and the published APIs were the same functions but with a delay loop.
Anticompetitive action is how we got here.
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"Word and Excel really have nothing to do with one another. And Outlook has little to do with either."
What they have in common is that at one point Microsoft was using secret APIs for office, and the published APIs were the same functions but with a delay loop.
Anticompetitive action is how we got here.
Know that I'm not new to this. I'm one of the grizzled old guys. The original MS antitrust trials involving forcing OEMs to bundle Windows licenses with all machines was something I lived through. But today is today. Just because a company did something bad nearly three decades ago doesn't mean that this thing is also bad. Doesn't mean it isn't, either. I'm hoping for discussion and debate based on merits of the situation, not... other stuff.
Re: Mixed Feelings (Score:5, Informative)
How we got here is not "other stuff".
Microsoft continues the anticompetitive acts to this day, this bullshit CPU instruction for Windows 11 is a great example. They never changed their stripes.
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There is nothing anti-competitive about placing minimum system requirements on your software. In fact Microsoft has *always* had minimum system requirements for Windows all based on user experience. Why would it suddenly be anti-competitive simply because in this case the minimum system requirement is a part that is needed for the security components of the OS itself?
Microsoft definitely does anti-competitive things. But please stop being hysterical simply because you see their name. Not everything they do
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There is nothing anti-competitive about placing minimum system requirements on your software.
There easily can be, and in this case there is.
Microsoft definitely does anti-competitive things. But please stop being hysterical simply because you see their name.
Microsoft occasionally does normal things, but please stop throwing yourself in front of the bullet any time you see criticism. Their requirement for this specific CPU instruction was designed specifically to obsolete their prior OS (which they fraudulently claimed would be the last version of Windows) and force people to purchase new hardware and software in order to run the software they've been locked into by DECADES of anticompetitive action.
Get a grip man.
Get some facts,
Re: (Score:2)
I also lived through all of that, and I think that you make a great point. The last three enterprises that I have worked for had standardized on Google's office suite. Yes, they had some people that used Excel, but that was perhaps a dozen licenses out of thousands of desktops. And nothing is stopping Google from bundling Meet with their toolset.
Of course, this is less about Microsoft and bundling and more about the EU and taxation. After all, if you are the EU why not fine Microsoft? They are going
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Re: (Score:2)
I'm wondering what kind of idiot would still be using Microsoft's products when Libreoffice is just as good, plus free, open and honest.
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Maybe the person that wants something Libreoffice doesn't provide, like Onenote?
Otherwise I generally agree with you that MS-Word & Excel aren't anything special, and I still hate Outlook.
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Is some shitty note taking UI really worth subjecting yourself to privacy invasion by Microsoft, or worse?
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Based on your reply, I'd say you don't use an e-notebook.
I guess it depends on how much you like Onenote, but for me it's the standard by which I measure all others. I find it that good and I have ~20 years notes in it. Of course, I suppose the best of all worlds is to use Libreoffice/Openoffice for the editor and spreadsheet programs, Thunderbird for email, and Onenote for my e-notebook. Onenote is free at least from the MS store.
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Right, onenote is standalone and online. So you're free from your evil master at last! Go forth and multiply.
Monopoly Like Abuse (Score:5, Insightful)
Because so many business will not switch off of Excel and Exchange/Outlook, Microsoft has "conveniently" bundled more software along with it, at a price other software vendors cannot compete; Microsoft is abusing their economy of scale/market dominance. The original 90's Office bundle was what many players in the market were offering, namely WordPerfect, and there was competition, sot of. Fast forward 20 years and when an "office productivity app" concept comes along, like Slack, Zoom or Dropbox, Microsoft simply bundled their own version with EXISTING LICENSES at a price point below what Slack, Zoom etc. were offering. The people in charge of money at businesses made a nearly entirely financial savings decision to use whatever Microsoft bundles, because piecemealing possibly better apps together is more expensive, since Excel and Exchange/Outlook are must have applications.
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I've bounced back and forth between Exchange+Outlook and GSuite (using mail.app and calendar.app as clients) over the past decade and GSuite is significantly less buggy than the Microsoft offering.
I've use Slack/zoom/tTeams over the past few year and each Teams release is about trading one set of bugs with an other set of bugs. In recent weeks our Teams video calls would have the video feeds cropped around the middle. We were having conversations with chins and foreheads for a couple of weeks.
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Microsoft has "conveniently" bundled more software along with it
I'm not sure why you put conveniently in quotes as if bundling this software isn't the most obvious thing to do. Teams is not just about video calls. It integrates heavily into all office tools including exchange to provide online status within outlook, provides custom presentation interfaces for Powerpoint, integrates into Sharepoint, PowerBi, exchange callendar, just to name the first couple of things on the top of my head. There's virtually zero point to using Teams if you are not an MS Office user, and
So (Score:3)
Why doesn't Libre/ODF do some deal and bundle some video conferencing software with LibreOffice?
Re: (Score:2)
Because Teams isn't just video conferencing software. It's quite tightly integrated into virtually all elements of Office. The most obvious comparison to draw was the old Skype for Business. People who needed it used it, just like people who have Libre office and need video conferencing already just go get one.
Some examples: Chat, video (obviously), online status integration with Outlook, calendar integration in exchange, cross company federation via M365 accounts, integration into Sharepoint, Azure Dev Ops
It's not just a couple of apps (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft recently tried to fuck people over by automatically jacking up the price of their Office 365 subscription to include "AI" whether people asked for it not. Some people successfully managed to downgrade again but this is straight up shitty anti-consumer behaviour. Of course the best way to avoid this BS is don't participate in the first place.
Repeat offender (Netscape) (Score:2)