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.
European Commission press release
Chalk this one up in the unsurprising column, too. Teams has infested Office, and merely by being bundled it’s become a major competitor to Slack, even though everyone who has to use it seems to absolutely despise Teams with a shared passion rivaling only Americans’ disgust for US Congress.
On a mildly related note, I’m working with a friend to set up a Matrix server specifically for OSAlert users, so we can have a self-hosted, secure, and encrypted space to hang out, continue conversations beyond the shelf life of a news item, suggest interesting stories, point out spelling mistakes, and so on. It’ll be invite-only at first, with preference given to Patreons, active commenters, and other people I trust. We intend to federate, so if everything goes according to plan, you can use your existing Matrix username and account.
I’ll keep y’all posted.
While I strongly prefer Slack to Teams, I give some props to Teams for replacing Skype for Business. Teams is *great* compared to that dumpster fire.
Good on EU for regulating tech though. I think that that tipped me towards being slightly pro-EU membership for my country (we’re currently not a member).
Skype for Business is “just” rebranded Lync, which is a travesty on its own.
So, the EU is complaining that as a user I am getting Teams for free? How is this good for me?
You aren’t getting Teams for free, or better you are not getting anything for free, when it comes to Microsoft.
Of course I am. I am subscribed to their office 365 account, and they include it for free. My price didnt change.
“Part of a subscription” == “Free” ??
Of course. It was not included in the beginning, and then they included if for the same price.
As Enturbulated stated, being part of a paid subscription is not free. It’s simply included.
It’s not really clear to me what exactly the EU’s remedy is for this, but I wanted to concur with “included with subscription != free”.
They do have a “free” home plan…
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/compare-microsoft-teams-home-options
I tried testing on linux to see if it was free there or if it required an active windows license, but I am a bit surprised/disappointed to see that microsoft are blocking firefox…
https://ibb.co/zHtSBKH
It was not included in the beginning, and then they included if for the same price.
So not only it’s not free, it’s way worse than that, that is as soon as you stop paying the subscription fee, you lose access to all tools you are currently using, including Teams. But note that this is not on why market regulator intervened. The problem here is competition, to Teams, can never compete under such terms and on the long run, you as a consumer, get less. That is if five, ten or twenty years from now, you would say i am fed up with Microsoft and their subscriptions terms and services, for Teams. Well, you won’t have any alternative to switch to. Like with for example with yogurt. Imagine if there would only be one brand of yogurt on the market and you would get added sugar in it for free. Yummy.
Spot On. It undermines all the other vendor alternatives under the guise of being free while taking root in your processes. But in the end, you don’t have any say in the functionality I’d rather pay a vendor (even MS), just to have a voice at the table on the feature set.
If I am paying for word, excel, and powerpoint 10 euros a month, and then microsoft ads teams and I am still paying 10 euros a month, it means that i got it for free.
No, what that simply means is you are paying for word, excel, power point and teams 10 euros a month, on top of that you already paid for windows. This perception, you have, that you are getting any of it for free, that is killing competition. As you somehow assume, as result, competition must provide you with a free access to teams alternative, for you even to consider it. Although you are paying Microsoft a shit load of money, to use teams as you say for free
And note that regulator is not trying to prevent you, as consumer, to spend a shit load on money on Microsoft,y you are free to do that. What the end goal here is, for teams to operate as an individual company and for teams competition to compete on the same terms. So far, historically speaking, no regulator has had the balls yet, to do what their job is. To for example decouple Chrome from Google, Teams from Microsoft … Lately this is improving somehow, as Apple lost exclusivity, when i comes to their market, something unimaginable in the past decades. Anyway, for the requirement being this must be independently developed products and should be subjected to market rules and to operate under the terms the same as competition. Although billions get spend on this product, under Google or Microsoft umbrella, end users perceive it as being free and so should then competition be free. Pure market distortion by this monopolies, hindering progress and innovation on the long term. End users not exactly helping here, historically speaking Microsoft and Apple users proving they are willing to help this monopolies to stay monopolies, monopolies perfectly happy with screwing them over and over again, on the long term.
kwanbis,
That’s not free though. If a grocery store says “buy two, get one free”, is that 3rd item *actually* free? No obviously not, You can’t just get it for free because it’s a bundle deal. What’s really happening is that you are buying 3 bundle for a discounted price. Calling it “free” was just a marketing tactic.
I think MS Teams is not a great product, but if you have an organisation on the MS ecosphere then the way it integrates is almost unbeatable for users of Windows. So I can’t see any point to the EU case as even Windows users are free to use Slack if they want, but Slack or any other product needs to deliver competitive functionality. So to me it makes the case more of a dummy spit than a genuine claim.
Does MS offer an API for other applications to also get that integration ? If not, that’s already a problem.
I’m not on Matrix yet, but I’m open to giving it a go as an extension to OSAlert. I’ve been a silent reader of this website since forever (that’s at least 10 years but I think longer) and I’d be great be able to geek out over some of the more obscure, less mainstream articles beyond the comment section.
I can testify to that, while somewhat decent now, Teams was just a terrible barely useful prototype of a functional software at the key points during heat of Covid 19. It’s competitors were leaps and bounds ahead of it and its only advantage was just being there. Our devs begged for slack license (as free version chat history amnesia gets old quickly once you start doing anything serious) but their prayers have fallen to deaf ears. While this time EU reacted faster but it still may be a done deal for competitors.