EU Complaint Accuses Microsoft of Anticompetitive Bundling of OneDrive, Teams in Windows (zdnet.com) 137
"Remember how Microsoft spent years in hot water in the late '90s and early '00s by forcing Internet Explorer on its customers?" asks ZDNet.
"European open-source cloud company Nextcloud does." Now, with a coalition of other European Union (EU) software and cloud organizations and companies called the "Coalition for a Level Playing Field," Nextcloud has formally complained to the European Commission about Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior by aggressively bundling its OneDrive cloud, Teams, and other services with Windows 10 and 11.
Nextcloud claims that by pushing consumers to sign up and hand over their data to Microsoft, the Windows giant is limiting consumer choice and creating an unfair barrier for other companies offering competing services. Specifically, Microsoft has grown its EU market share to 66%, while local providers' market share declined from 26% to 16%. Microsoft has done this not by any technical advantage or sales benefits, but by heavily favoring its own products and services, self-preferencing over other services. While self-preferencing is not illegal per se under EU competition laws, if a company abuses its dominant market position, it can break the law. Nextcloud states that Microsoft has outright blocked other cloud service vendors by leveraging its position as gatekeeper to extend its reach in neighboring markets, pushing users deeper into its ecosystems. Thus, more specialized EU companies can't compete on merit, as the key to success is not a good product but the ability to distort competition and block market access....
So, Nextcloud is asking the European Commission's Directorate-General for Competition to prevent this kind of abusive behavior and keep the market competitive and fair for all players. Nextcloud is doing this by filing an official complaint with this body. In addition, Nextcloud has also filed a request with the German antitrust authorities, the Bundeskartellamt, for an investigation against Microsoft. With its partners, it's also discussing filing a similar complaint in France.
Nextcloud is being joined in its complaint by several open-source, non-profit organizations. These include the European DIGITAL SME Alliance; the Document Foundation, LibreOffice's backing organization; and the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE)... Numerous businesses are also supporting Nextcloud's legal action. This includes Abilian, an open-source software publisher; DAASI, an open-source identity management company; and Mailfence.
"European open-source cloud company Nextcloud does." Now, with a coalition of other European Union (EU) software and cloud organizations and companies called the "Coalition for a Level Playing Field," Nextcloud has formally complained to the European Commission about Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior by aggressively bundling its OneDrive cloud, Teams, and other services with Windows 10 and 11.
Nextcloud claims that by pushing consumers to sign up and hand over their data to Microsoft, the Windows giant is limiting consumer choice and creating an unfair barrier for other companies offering competing services. Specifically, Microsoft has grown its EU market share to 66%, while local providers' market share declined from 26% to 16%. Microsoft has done this not by any technical advantage or sales benefits, but by heavily favoring its own products and services, self-preferencing over other services. While self-preferencing is not illegal per se under EU competition laws, if a company abuses its dominant market position, it can break the law. Nextcloud states that Microsoft has outright blocked other cloud service vendors by leveraging its position as gatekeeper to extend its reach in neighboring markets, pushing users deeper into its ecosystems. Thus, more specialized EU companies can't compete on merit, as the key to success is not a good product but the ability to distort competition and block market access....
So, Nextcloud is asking the European Commission's Directorate-General for Competition to prevent this kind of abusive behavior and keep the market competitive and fair for all players. Nextcloud is doing this by filing an official complaint with this body. In addition, Nextcloud has also filed a request with the German antitrust authorities, the Bundeskartellamt, for an investigation against Microsoft. With its partners, it's also discussing filing a similar complaint in France.
Nextcloud is being joined in its complaint by several open-source, non-profit organizations. These include the European DIGITAL SME Alliance; the Document Foundation, LibreOffice's backing organization; and the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE)... Numerous businesses are also supporting Nextcloud's legal action. This includes Abilian, an open-source software publisher; DAASI, an open-source identity management company; and Mailfence.
Onedrive? (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously? Who uses that? If they want to bust up anti-competiveness why don't they ask all the messaging services to interoperate with each other? I am talking about Apple iMessages, Zuckerface Whatsapp, Viber, Telegram, signal, etc. And of course require end-to-end encryption to be preserved.
Re:Onedrive? (Score:5, Informative)
If they want to bust up anti-competiveness why don't they ask all the messaging services to interoperate with each other?
Guess what, they are also working on interoperability of messaging services https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
Seriously? Who uses that?
Who uses onedrive: schools, businesses, because it comes included. Some years ago we were using services from Seafile. Onedrive came as a bundle when we upgraded to windows 10 and I guess the price was interesting to our IT department, simplifying the management of the contracts, and less work for them since everything already comes together. The consequence is what what is in TFS: increased market share for MS for no real technical advantage.
Re:Onedrive? (Score:5, Insightful)
Your "too lazy" is my underfunded, over-stressed and in need of a standard. If IT Management have said "this is our standard", i can argue against it. On technical merit, other solutions are probably better than, for example, Onedrive.
However, Onedrive has the advantage of being integrated in to an already existing solution (Office 365), does not require extra payment and users don't need to remember an extra password. Every extra application IT has to support means more, DIFFERENT, support tickets which all cost time to resolve.
Let's not forget that security and compliance regimes are a thing and we have to prove GDPR complaince. If we went implemented, say, Dropbox, we would have to get legal to vet Dropbox AND then the contract. And it's another payment, And we may have to setup and maintain yet another AD sync connector or deal with the nightmare of users not remembering passwords for yet another system - and of course, it needs to have MFA. And we have to have security vet all the administrative settings, and recommended user settings, and monitor it. We then have another administrative console to manage to check if the service is running normally, or our users are complaining "files are slow". Yes, we have single pane of glass, but the "glass" can get pretty big to see everything.
Meanwhile, I have better things to do, like add value to the business by helping with new initiatives.
Money and Time > Technical Merit, when the solution is "good enough". 5 employees in a business? Sure, let em do what ever they want. 50 - probably a sh*tshow, but whatever. 500, or 5000 users? Nah - we gunna need a bigger IT dept.
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Companies use Onedrive(And sharepoint online) a LOT.
Basic fileservers have almost totally disappeared from our customers and other companies that we come in contact with. They have been basically "always" replaced by office 365 with the shared fires in sharepoint and the user files in onedrive.
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That is built in (Score:2)
Lots of people use it (Score:3)
Some of them deliberately.
Some just make it available for whoever compromises their Office/365 account to use for malware distribution.
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Re:Onedrive? (Score:5, Interesting)
Had MS only been offering bundled software it wouldn't really matter.
Tell that to Netscape :)
If you are going to blame MS for bundling, may as well line up Apple and Google for doing the exact same thing with their phones, tablets and desktops. No difference.
Microsoft has a monopoly on commercial computing in the US, very few businesses can function without it. Neither Google nor Apple has a monopoly on either mobile or desktop. Apple's market share is growing, especially for personal use, but they aren't abusing their market position to displace new software and services like Microsoft is.
P.S. This is really just Europe fleecing MS for cash because the continent can't seem to compete on technical merits.
Typically I'd agree with you, but even the US took Microsoft to court over browser bundling along with EU and Korea. This is the exact same thing all over again. The battleground just moved from browsers to collaboration tools (Slack, Teams, WebEx Teams, Mattermost, etc.).
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That's a joke, right?
Google drive, like onedrive is unavailable for linux since forever. Google's shit is so much bundled, and literally laced with contracts with hardware ma
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Where are the European competitors for smart phones btw?
I know that to you smartphone zombies smartphones are the begin-all and end-all of modern technology but in the end they are really just another product. The Europeans tend to focus more on maintaining the heavier goods manufacturing capability that the US ceded to China along with most of the rest of US manufacturing than they are bleeping and blinking little tablets. The Competitors to the US based smartphone makers are in China, Korea and Japan. Where are US designed smartphones and most of their compone
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Don't talk about me. Please, be better at thinking. We are talking about monopolies here. Has it ever occured to you that /. visitors are a drop in the ocean?
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There is a method in KDE that works like crap. (I don't know Gnome as I don't use it.) I am not talking about stuff that is freely available by third-party, or even paid like InSync.
Google could have easily provided a download button for the deb file they are apparently using on their machines, on their website. They literally chose not to. It has never been there, and it has been years.
This is all tangent to point I was making. Google uses its muscle power behind the scenes of a free search engine and that
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That functionality has been rolled out, like, last month? Dropbox seems to be working just fine. Even nextcloud seems to be working fine.
I don't know why you are trying to excuse Google from seriously anti-competitive behavior. Their love of open-source only goes so far as to kill any innovation in a competing product. They churn out one shitty product after the other and when they see a competition they open source it, and when don't they abandon it.
The only reason Google Drive is not open source is becaus
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Where are my mod points? Someone give this insightfu, please.
Re:Onedrive? (Score:5, Informative)
If you are going to blame MS for bundling, may as well line up Apple and Google for doing the exact same thing with their phones, tablets and desktops. No difference.
We do. Google who got the second largest fine from the EU over such practices. (Or just read that sentence another way and get your answer). Apple is a harder one since they are a closed ecosystem. You can't be accused for bundling your own stuff on your own stuff. Well you can be accused of it, but it never goes anywhere in the courts (as was tested just recently by the courts which decided Apple does not have a monopoly with the App store on their devices).
Your confusion stems from the user expectation of the device. Google and Apple don't get in trouble for bundling browsers, calendars, and email apps because they fundamentally are a minimum expectation of a smartphone, users would actively complain if a default wasn't included. That was not so in 1995 and Microsoft very much got in the shit for "bundling" not just because of their contractual requirements to OEMs.
Notice also how specifically the complaints about Windows now are related to Group chat and Cloud storage, both of which are not default minimum expectations of an operating system.
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I mean, Linux came from Europe, and it works pretty well.
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wut?
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Don't like our American attitudes, then don't use our software and services. Build your own stuff.
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A lot of places I've worked at. Specifically the ones not using Googles daft apps.
I can't say in all honesty I've ever actually saved a thing to OneDrive. But its part of the whole Office365 ecosystem and microsoft doesnt seem to provide a way to swap that backend out to Dropbox or Google or whatever.
I'm su
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A lot of places I've worked at. Specifically the ones not using Googles daft apps.
I can't say in all honesty I've ever actually saved a thing to OneDrive. But its part of the whole Office365 ecosystem and microsoft doesnt seem to provide a way to swap that backend out to Dropbox or Google or whatever.
I'm sure there might be a way, but I don't know what it is, and thats half the problem. If I dont know how to do it, I can hardly expect Joe the plumber who uses Office365 because he uses office at home, to kno
Re: Onedrive? (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh fuck that.
I use iMessage and block all SMS messages to virtually eliminate spam. The very last thing I want in the universe is for people on all those other platforms to have the ability to use them to send their shit my way.
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Also, over the years I've maybe received one spam via SMS, I'd say you need to contact your politicians to have that shit banned.
Re: Onedrive? (Score:2)
Yes, I know.
The only person I want messages from is my wife (who uses an iPhone). Everyone else can send email.
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Seriously? Who uses that?
Seriously? Who doesn't. OneDrive underpins all modern Sharepoint file management. It's provided free with a Microsoft account, it underpins the anti-ransomware features of Defender and MS annoys people into signing up to it in multiple ways including telling people there's something wrong with their PC if they don't.
Anyone who has an Office 365 subscription has a huge OneDrive allotment with it, and it is the default save location for Office. Schools use it, companies use it, governments use it (MS specific
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Re: Onedrive? (Score:2)
Unless you are careful during installation you will get onedrive forced on you - and you can never leave.
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The problem with OneDrive is that it doesn't work.
I'm a university professor in charge of huge classes. Our university has sold out to Microsoft, and so the students' email is some Lookout365 thing.
When students go to send email, sometimes when they are trying to attach files, it "helpfully" gets in the way and "offers" to upload the attachment to OneDrive instead of attaching it as normal. So sometimes their stuff arrives as a OneDrive link.
But these links never work, because of something something sharing
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I don't know what rock you live under, but Onedrive is essentially Sharepoint dumbed down and rebranded to be a direct competitor to Google Drive. I have Sharepoint directories synced to my computer using the Onedrive app. So I don't know where you are coming from, but Onedrive/Sharepoint is the most widely used Enterprise cloud storage solution.
And you know why Enterprise uses it? Because for a measly 10 bucks a month per user, you get Sharepoint, Onedrive, Account sync across machines via ActiveDirectory,
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Oh and also Teams. And everything is intergrated - files on Teams and viewable and syncable through Sharepoint and Onedrive.
Heck, Slack alone costs as much as the whole package from MS.
Who uses that? (Score:2)
*Raises hand*
I do.
When I was finally forced to pick a paid lane (i.e. my dropbox free limit was reached), I looked at the options and chose OneDrive.
Frankly, this is likely due to their competitive advantage, which is at the heart of this whole debate. It just worked. So, yes - I think it's an unfair advantage. And yes, I'm glad it was an option, and I would choose it again.
I chose function over philosophy.
Edge anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I guess every OS needs a browser installed by default, so you have something to download a better browser with.
PROTIP for Windows 11, it has WinGet built in so you can use that to install Firefox or Chrome without every opening Edge.
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oh, thanks!
Previously I would have to use Edge to download Chrome, and then use that to download Ubuntu/Fedora...
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It's only a matter of time until Clippy appears with "It looks like you're downloading a Linux ISO..."
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I guess every OS needs a browser installed by default, so you have something to download a better browser with.
Why? We managed to get browsers before they were bundled, we can do it again. As for Winget, that's just another example of MS bundling things they shouldn't. It needs to go too.
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We used to get browsers on floppy disks and CD-ROMs. Modern computers have neither of those things. I imagine most people would be pretty upset if their OS didn't have a web browser out of the box.
I can't see an issue with WinGet. It is mostly third party software in the database, it offers little advantage to Microsoft. Again, I imagine most Linux users would be upset if their distro didn't come with a package manager installed by default.
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Governments could also mandate an open source program that isn't under the control of MS or any other OS maker (including "Big Linux") that allows the user to download any browser they want. Let the user to search for a browser they want or pi
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If your business model is to sell low cost USB drives with your browser on, your browser is not going to be very popular. Even the ones you can download for free struggle to get any traction.
WinGet is open source. Okay MS control the repo but most of the apps on there are managed by third parties, mostly individuals. It's way more than FTP, it manages versions, dependencies, automates the install process and handles updates. It's a pretty capable package manager.
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Governments could also mandate an open source program that isn't under the control of MS or any other OS maker (including "Big Linux") that allows the user to download any browser they want. Let the user to search for a browser they want or pick one from a randomized list. Fund it with a tax on MS, Apple, Ubuntu, RedHat, etc.
Let me post that again since you seem to have conveniently skipped over it. But I guess I should expect it.
As for WinGet, no, it sucks compared to pretty much every alternative. Even if it was the best package manager ever designed, it should not be FORCED onto users, open source or not. Being open source is not a excuse to allow the company driving the product to employ anti-competitive practices.
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If Microsoft shouldn't be bundling Winget then Linux should also get rid of the myriad of package managers that come bundled with their distros.
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The problem with Edge is that you'd need to go after it for specific practices, such as the link hijacking, and changing of defaults, and ultimately that is a higher bar to prove with smaller payoff in an antitrust suit.
Expected performance comes into whether bundling is illegal or not. It's not 1995 anymore, users expect an OS to come with a browser preinstalled so MS won't get ruled against in the same way as they did back then. Even the "N" edition of Windows dropped the browser selection screen, and AFA
Re: Edge anyone? (Score:2)
What is left, then? (Score:1, Troll)
A very honest question: Take away all pieces that are anticompetitive and bundled with Windows. What is left? Not even the shell - there are tools that allows users to modify the Windows UI, to act as control panel, to act as command prompt, to browse the web, to replace Notepad, Paint, Calc, you name it. What does the EU wants with these moves?
Re:What is left, then? (Score:5, Insightful)
OneDrive and Teams are not needed to use the OS. Nice strawman attempt.
Do you work for Microsoft?
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OneDrive and Teams are not needed to use the OS.
Well, if they follow their old IE playbook - some of the libraries necessary for operating these applications will magically move away from the applications themselves and become part of the OS. Then Microsoft can indeed claim that Windows won’t operate without OneDrive or Teams installed.
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OneDrive and Teams are not needed to use the OS. Nice strawman attempt.
Do you work for Microsoft?
He isn't entirely wrong in principle though. It's not 1995. We don't expect to get an OS and need to go to insane efforts to get basic functionality. Sure OneDrive and Teams are a stretch, but look at everything else: basic calendar, web browser, functioning file manager, media player. There are plenty of apps which could be seen in equally "anticompetitive" light which are a minimum expectation for anyone installing an OS, be that Windows, Mac, or even a Linux variant.
Also OneDrive is not needed to use the
Re:What is left, then? (Score:5, Insightful)
: Take away all pieces that are anticompetitive and bundled with Windows. What is left?
A core OS that can be used as a base for anything people want to use it for, just like GNU/Linux and BSD.
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Core OS is a euphemism for "doesn't work out of the box". No I'm not being funny, a user doesn't expect a shell when they first turn on their PC (or Mac) or even their Phone.
I expect a shell when provisioning a server the first time (both definitions of the word shell).
Re: What is left, then? (Score:2)
There is no hard line, but you always decide by committee what belongs to the OS and what should be apps and offered independently without prejudice in the app shop or cross app integration. With the size of monolithic apps again decided by committee (ie. One drive and Teams should be seperate from office).
The only problem is that by now Google and Apple are getting large enough that just beating Microsoft with that stick is hardly consistent.
Re: What is left, then? (Score:2)
PS. Of course the app shop in and of itself could be deemed not an essential part of the OS too.
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Honest answer: a less annoying, more flexible, and *better* operating system.
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As I remembered the first time Irfanview started up it gave a bunch of options and I set it to be the default for pictures.
Regretfully that didn't work, it's still in paint that jpg's open up.
So far I haven't had the time to check what else can be done to get Irfanview as the default but the system sure sucks.
Institutional Amnesia? (Score:5, Insightful)
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The relief measures were a very mild hand slap, nothing more. But they did get MS to start bribing the politicians, excuse me, making campaign donations, like all the other major companies.
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Business decision. Regulators are very slow and the fines are fairly small, so overall the benefit of getting to bundle Teams and OneDrive for several years outweigh the costs.
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No. The relief measures were specific to software of the date. Antitrust rules about one application do not apply to others, and a company is very much welcome to be anticompetitive without breaching the first ruling. But even more fundamentally if you look at the case you may find the measures imposed were about API access and documentation.
At no point did the ruling forbid MS from bundling or require them to remove something they shipped with the OS.
Now what is far more interesting is the ruling requires
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I seem to recall an anti-trust suit filed by the US against Microsoft, and if I recall correctly there were some fairly rigorous relief measures imposed.
You do not recall correctly. The USDoJ let Microsoft off with [literally less than] a handslap. Bush's AG Ashcroft said it wasn't in our interest to hold them accountable. It's the EU that actually made them change up their browser selection screen, fined them, etc.
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That's what they think, but it is even in the US best interest to ensure not all your software is 100% dependent on Microsoft. If left completely unchecked you'd be using Microsoft Windows, with a Microsoft Browser, email client, office, only usable with a Microsoft Mouse, Keyboard, Monitor and CPU.
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That's what they think, but it is even in the US best interest to ensure not all your software is 100% dependent on Microsoft.
CONSPIRACY THEORY ALERT
Right after this happened Microsoft went full-on spyware.
Right after this happened Gates created his foundation, a massive tax dodge which has achieved none of its stated goals but which has made Gates richer than he was before he endowed it.
Is it paranoid to believe that the deal was that he gets to keep his money if he moves it into a trust where he doesn't appear to control it directly, while Windows becomes part of the always-on, always-listening panopticon controlled by the NSA?
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The relief measures consisted of, amongst other things, giving Windows away to schools for free, so a new generation would grow up with Windows and bring MS lots of profit in the long run.
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Apple did the same exact thing, before Microsoft ever did.
https://timeline.com/apple-kid... [timeline.com]
But MS was forced to do this by a judge, as 'punishment.'
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They have a point (Score:5, Insightful)
Our org wouldn't be using Teams if it weren't bundled with the OS, because it sucks rotting eggs on a good day.
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There are people who use Teams because they like Microsoft software.
I, however, am not one of them. I use Teams because my *manager* likes Microsoft software.
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I've found that people use Teams not because they like Teams, but because they like/need Excel/Powerpoint/Word, and if you 'have' to pay for those, you must also have access to Teams. So it becomes the logical choice for any company not actively avoiding Office applications.
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Why is your org so sad it can't download competing software? How is this MS's fault your admin team can't figure out an alternative solution, since several exist. Maybe your management is at fault?
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Bundling with *Windows* is less the issue for corp use and bundlingy with *office*. The team *could* figure out how to install a teams competitor, however, this would also mean paying for something else when they are already paying for Teams, they can't opt out of Teams so their users would see Teams anyway and the worst thing for a company would be some people using Teams and other people using Slack and not having a consensus on the 'correct one'. You can't avoid your users seeing Teams, so at least som
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Your org isn't using Teams due to any bundling with the OS. It's using Teams due to integration with the rest of MS's Cloud offering.
OS bundling is not only new in Windows 11 (and I assume you're not running Windows 11 because corporations typically aren't that stupid) but on a corporate machine that can be disabled by IT administration.
Too little, too late, IMO .... (Score:3)
I remember when Microsoft first started building out all of this stuff for O365. First, we saw the free Exchange support included with your O365 license, which pretty much killed off all the 3rd. party services who used to offer cloud-hosted Exchange mail for businesses. Then they moved on to develop Teams (plus moving Skype for Business into it), OneDrive, MS Flow, Power BI, Microsoft Stream, etc. It became clear that they were trying to kill anything that did a "value add" to the standard Windows + Office duo used by businesses everywhere.
I was really expecting more push-back to Microsoft taking over all the Exchange mail hosting like they did, but I guess the other "big players" in that space just accepted the loss of customers and found ways to survive (a la Intermedia)?
I've never found anyone who thinks MS Teams has acceptable levels of performance or system resource usage. By all metrics, the thing is a sluggish pig of an application. But it's winning people over at this point because it's (again) free with your existing O365 licensing, PLUS it's so integrated with everything else they're selling. (The new "Microsoft Phone" product is letting people take an existing PBX and adapt it so all your phone calls in and out go through Teams. No legacy PBX? Even easier! Just assign people VoIP phone numbers and use Teams as a VoIP phone solution!)
OneDrive is, again, taking over primarily due to the integration. If you use SharePoint, you're pretty much using OneDrive at this point. (Any files or folders on the SharePoint can sync with a click of a single button on the toolbar of the web page, so they become available via the Windows Explorer after that. That means modern businesses are setting up that SharePoint and OneDrive combo as their cloud substitute for a traditional file server with shares to connect up.)
If you need to host videos for your Intranet? You can again, free of charge, upload these to MS Stream, which integrates with SharePoint. So no need to have separate logins/accounts for other services like YouTube or Vimeo or what-not for all of that.
I feel like the proverbial horse has been let out of the barn already and the fences have all been removed, and NOW people are saying, "Hey! Our horse is escaping. We should probably do something!" I guess the EU can file more lawsuits or whatever .... but it's the software developers who should have been aware this was going on for the last few years and started coding more competitive alternatives! (A bunch of people I know dumped subscriptions to services like DropBox due to the exorbitant annual fees, even though they technically worked pretty well. It's such a big project to switch vendors for a heavily used cloud storage service like that, they typically moved to OneDrive because "free" and because "it's the one that'll work with all this O365 stuff the easiest".)
NextCloud is a cool product and I run one here at home. But it's nowhere NEAR ready for prime time as a substitute for the bundle MS offers businesses today! At best, it's a nice open source alternative for small business or educational use in environments where people don't mind things like videos often not playing properly when clicked on, because the proper video CODEC isn't supported, or major updates happening at a rapid pace with little support for staying on older, known stable releases.
Nextcloudâ¦. (Score:2)
Everything old is new again (Score:3, Interesting)
The other day win10 started overiding the default search engine in Chrome to be Bing instead of DuckDuckGo. Even when I completely removed Bing as an option from Chrome, when I restarted it showed back up.
After a few restarts of whack-a-mole, it quit doing it.
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The other day win10 started overiding the default search engine in Chrome to be Bing instead of DuckDuckGo.
I'm calling bullshit. There's zero documented evidence of Windows doing anything of the sort. Now there's plenty of documented evidence of shitty plugins, extensions, malware and other shit the user installed doing it. That is common enough that Chrome even provides a dedicated tool to find out what software is changing its settings.
You can follow one of the helpful guides online on how to clean up your Chrome setup.
Re: Everything old is new again (Score:2)
Only after some small or big update somehow connected to the browser you use in some way.
I'm a believer in that rule ... (Score:2)
Never use the odd-numbered versions. I'm waiting for MS to release TwoDrive.
Also, now that I'm kinda "retired", I'd rather use a standalone version of Teams -- Team.
Anticompetitive Bundling (Score:5, Interesting)
"Anticompetitive Bundling" has basically been Microsoft's primary business model since the Win98 era, although recently they've been branching out into surveillance capitalism.
Complaint to the EU (Score:2)
The headline is disingenuous, it's a complaint to the EU more than an EU complaint.
I'm kinda over this (Score:2)
We have to fix up one drive by updating it when providing workstations to our users. I wish we had a newer version bundled.
Are we going to give Apple a hard time for providing iCloud access on Mac?
I bet not and it's a much much much more locked down ecosystem.
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We have to fix up one drive by updating it when providing workstations to our users. I wish we had a newer version bundled.
Are we going to give Apple a hard time for providing iCloud access on Mac?
I bet not and it's a much much much more locked down ecosystem.
Not sure how big your shop is, but we generally address issues like this by building our own standard OS images that we put on user workstations.
The real problem is MS should be broken up (Score:2)
The U.S. DOI missed the real problem during the original anti trust hearings. Microsoft should really have been broken up into two companies. One that provides the actual O/S and one that provides the desktop GUI. Possibly another that provides user land programs programs. The OS should come with compreshensive documentation that would allow third parties to have the same chance at interoperating with the OS that the MS desktop has. And all such operation should be done through published APIs only. No
Re: The real problem is MS should be broken up (Score:2)
Even without windows integration, office integration would kill the competition.
More fines! (Score:2)
Possible cure (Score:3)
Split Microsoft up into smaller parts.
They forgot someone(s) (Score:2)
Unpaid library fines (Score:2)
I think that, before they can be sued for for functionality . . . functionality should exist. After that we should have a way of comparing it and other vendors.
So . . .
1) Microsoft would have to make interoperability USABLE
2) Microsoft, Google etc. would THEN need to disclose in a meaningful way how accessible your data is to you, your employer, their employees, bad actors
Wait? Where'd yall go? I can SEE you google .
And yet Apple gets away with... (Score:2)
...forcing Safari on iOS users.
Seriously, you cannot even INSTALL a different browser on iOS devices because any other "browser" you install is actually just a UI on top of Safari. And if you happen to use any of those other "browsers" Apple disables some modern APIs.
How in the world is that legal? Do they contribute that much more to politicians than Microsoft?
Re:Sounds to me like (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Sounds to me like (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
The rules are pretty clear, don't use your monopoly to expand into new markets.
Especially Microsoft should be aware of them by now. I hope they get an even harsher penalty because they should have known better.
The EU is just trying to prevent another monopolist expanding their monopoly elsewhere and the bad effects that has on the market in general. To know how fucked up it can get, you can just look at the huge market failures in the US, where consumers choice is often limited to just one option for TV,
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Sounds to me like (Score:5, Insightful)
Always funny how they always drag Google, MS, or a US company on the carpet, while they never bother to clean their own house.
Funny how Americans don't try to check the facts before making bold claims.
Just because you don't hear about all the cases where the EU drags European and Asian companies to court for anti-competitive behavior doesn't mean that doesn't happen. It's just that American media doesn't care to report it unless it involves an American company.
Re: (Score:2)
while they never bother to clean their own house
[Citation Required]. But don't bother since you won't find one to support your case given how the overwhelming majority of EU related cases are about EU companies you've never heard of in your little bubble.
Re: And many more (Score:2)
DaaS isn't helping either, Microsoft can make a proper multi-user server system, everyone else is forced to virtualize commodity Windows crapware.