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Comment by shp0ngle | Hacker News Reader

I have no idea how that happened, but one day, I found Teams suddenly automatically installed on my spouses computer; and not only auto-installed, but it auto-started on Windows start.

How? Why? It was probably bundled with Office and/or Windows.

MS got news-breaking fine for far less with Netscape before. But, nobody cares in 2020.

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It should be well known by now that if you're running Windows 10, Microsoft is your system administrator, and can control (at least technically) exactly what runs on your computer. Unless maybe if you really put time/effort into stopping that (if it's still possible at all).

This is not meant to be judgemental. I'm actually of the opinion this is better in general than leaving sysadmin duties to the general public, which was largely the situation in the 1990s / early 2000s. But outsourcing this to Microsoft does of course have it's downsides, like you just experienced.

We know what happens, the question is why is it allowed?

Because a bunch of people believe as a matter of ideology that Microsoft has the fundamental liberty to be your system administrator and that, in a free society, regulators can't so much as think about doing something about it. See the top of the thread.

Apple did it 10x worse with their iphone apps and now no one cares anymore.

Apple is not a monopoly.

I believe Apple folks recently said it's actually good to have Android around, so it prevents them to be under anti-monopoly laws.

Oh, lots of us care. It's just that the people who care the most arent using Windows much anymore. They are using linux. That choice, that freedom to install a competator OS, has empowered microsoft to do such things without fear of regulators.

Some of us who care have to use Windows at work. Instead of paying us more, our companies spend obscene sums on inferior software because that's what everyone else does.

I'm in that boat. Boss just told us to make sure our office 365 and teams accounts work from home. I emailed him back: "Then buy me a new computer because i dont got windows at home." In all likelyhood they will be issuing me a work laptop ... but now that i think about it, that is just another sale for microsoft. Evil is profitable.

If it weren't for work I'd ditch windows in no time. I dual boot so when done with work I run linux. Still wish windows wouldn't touch my system but for now I have no other option

> MS got news-breaking fine for far less with Netscape before. But, nobody cares in 2020.

Slack did file a complain against Microsoft to the European commission.

And remember that the netscape lawsuit in EU took the good part of 10 years from first complain to sentence.

Antitrust laws are too slow to be effective.

Microsoft was auto installing Teams with auto startup on Windows Server 2019 for a while. And you could only access settings to turn off auto startup if you logged in or changed some registry settings.

Microsoft is slowly consolidating "phone" features into the main windows OS, and I would imagine teams is the next step. The same way that "call" apps are a bundled thing on phones.

Seems like MS literally installed this about two hours ago for me with a forced update on Win10

I wonder if it's Office thing or they just push it to all Windows users.

It's an O365 thing, it has nothing to do with Windows. It also depends on a few things with the subscription and settings, so everyone won't get it automatically and if you do it's easy* to turn off.

*Once you know where to look.

>It's an O365 thing

It's now a "Microsoft 365" thing.

I find it weird how nobody complains about Apple bundling Messages or Safari.

They don't have monopoly. On (smart) phones or on computers.

And they are probably happy about that.

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