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Comment by withinboredom | Hacker News Reader

Jeez man. Everyone keeps bashing on Microsoft for this shit. Have they seen Google, Amazon, etc?

Apple, Google, Tesla etc seem to have mastered the art of regulatory dodgeball through observational experience and a successful series of pr campaigns of brand identity. There's no better evidence than HN itself where it's common practice to defend these companies for the analogous actions.

That same perception is why I think ms tends to be under scrutiny, as it should, but others don't. It's a real shame.

Apple and Tesla don’t have a monopoly. But the eye of Sauron gazes on Apple too (eg they are forced to end their Lightning connector).

As is Google: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_...

Oh no, poor little Apple has to play nice with the other kids.

Apple is the worst of the bunch imo. My personal ranking for worst antitrust offenders would be:

1) Apple 2) Amazon 3) Google 4) Microsoft

Internationally that may be slightly different though. I’d also maybe include meta for their oculus purchase but I think they’ve tied it into their core, “social” business well enough that I’m not very concerned at the moment when there are bigger fish to fry.

Nope. Google. They are on their way to corner the browser market. They've already killed Operas Presto and about every other engine except research engines and Firefox.

Chrome and the way they pushed it with ads on the front page of Google [1]. The way Calendar and YouTube again and again has issues with Firefox.

Or how some things just doesn't work in anything except Chrome - but hey, if you change how the browser identifies itself, suddenly other browsers work too.

[1]: no one else, even disaster relief I thinkhas been allowed a spot there. The market value of weeks in that spot must be billions.

The get out jail free card is that the engine is open source chromium, not actually held by Google. Others are free to use it.

Seeing that they already nerfed ad blocking possibilities in Chromium before completely killing Firefox, what do you think they will do once it is completely gone?

Those who use Chromium - either end users or browser creators who build on Chromium - are dependent on the whims of Google.

On this timeline, “completely killing Firefox” never happened. I used Chrome for a few years, but FF has been my primary browser since 2014.

Firefox zombie here, never noticed it dying. Firefoxs problems are generally things Mozilla does to itself.

I use Brave and I think it is great fwiw.

> Apple is the worst of the bunch imo.

What really irritates me is that they are the worst in most cases yet they PR themselves out of this. They sell themselves as the customer-privacy focused, environmentally conscious, smart and young company except that in reality it's exactly the opposite and they apply the most vile corporate tactics ever know to man. Hell, they even invented some.

>Apple is the worst of the bunch imo.

Not if you look at their respective market share.

Apple owns the majority mobile US market share. It's basically a monopoly.

But that's not the case in the EU. They are more likely to come after Google.

And the US government has issues coming after monopolies that are US based and bring a lot of money in (for obvious reasons).

If the US starts regulating these companies more it would harm the US GDP. At least in the short term. There is an argument to be had that it could make the markets more competitive in the long term but without a lot of credible threats from outside of the US why take the hit and the risk?

It's part of an oligopoly. Let's treat oligopolies the same as monopolies, because they behave almost the same.

65% is not a monopoly. In fact, we have a real judge that dismissed that argument in the Epic vs Apple case

57% ios vs 42% android.

Apple's share in the EU is actually small, so it's up to the US to break their monopoly .

These find a few unrelated cases, but the interesting bits tend to come first:

EU v. Google: https://competition-cases.ec.europa.eu/search?search=%22Alph...

EU v. Amazon: https://competition-cases.ec.europa.eu/search?search=%22Amaz...

EU v. Facebook: https://competition-cases.ec.europa.eu/search?search=%22face...

EU v. Apple: https://competition-cases.ec.europa.eu/search?search=%22appl...

...

So the only competition left in tech is about which one of the monopolies is the worst? :)

It was kind of bizarre realizing all the promises from Silicon Valley about a better world materialized into a monopolistic rent seeking surveillance adtech, basically. Personally, 10 years ago I was still breathing the "let's change the world" -ethos. The world got changed alright, for much worse.

Let's hope EU brings some sanity back into the market.

The offense is using market control in one section to control another market.

Windows being tied to AD only was the offense. Windows being tied to IE was the offense.

Google being the place you buy ad services from, and the auction house that places them and the service a website owner sells ad space to. is the offense.

I also don't understand what they expect.

That Microsoft bundles google meet? amazon chime? Slack?

> Slack filed a complaint with the EU in 2020, claiming that Microsoft was "force installing [Teams] for millions, blocking its removal, and hiding the true cost to enterprise customers."

I'm pretty sure force installing even more software and blocking removal isn't what they are going for.

Yes. Let me introduce you to a Mac. Where the messaging software comes preinstalled and you can’t remove it.

Well I never said Apple was better, and in fact I think there have been a number of antitrust charges against Apple as well, maybe not directly related to "messaging software" but at least one of them was about opening iMessage to interoperability as far as I remember.

what is the market share for MacOS in EU or in US?

I bet it is single digit right?

You can’t get mad at someone if you allow everyone else to do it too. That’s anti-competitive, on the government’s side.

That's the basis of modern anti-trust: bigger companies (by market share) are held to a higher standard to prevent monopolies.

Unregulated monopolies are even more anti-competitive. And it's more competitive to only regulate potential monopolies than entire markets. It's the best of no perfect option.

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks!

Are you forced to use it? I certainly don't use it. I was able to remove it from Windows without any problems.

You don't like it? you can use Linux or buy a Mac. There are very credible alternatives today.

Edge is bundled with Windows and Chrome still has 80% of the market or more. I still don't see the problem.

The market for Teams isn't personal use: it's enterprise use.

In enterprise, managed-device land, options are severely curtailed.

My current company uses Google's Workspace and Google Chat.

My previous company used Workspace also, but they used Slack.

For my startup, we use Google Workspace, and I would never ever pay the same amount of money I pay for GW to have Slack.

The value proposition of Slack is not that valuable to charge what they charge. I would happily pay 1 or 2 euros per month per user, no more.

I have never used Teams. Nobody is forcing me to.

That's good for you, but you are aware there are many, many Microsoft shops? And those people are often forced to use Teams because Microsoft sold to the VP/C*?

So? What you are saying is that Microsoft cannot add functionality?

So then make all companies only sell one product.

One company sells Excel, one company sells Google Sheet, One company sells Work, one company sells Google Docs, etc.

Is that what you want?

The rules change if company is found to have dominant position on the market. Its not rocket science, nor is it matter of opinion.

So you say that they can include Edge but not Teams? What is the difference?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrowserChoice.eu

For MS to stop using it's overwhelmingly dominant position on desktops (Office) to take out it's competitors in online communications (Slack, Zoom, etc).

Are you forced to use it? I certainly don't use it. I was able to remove it from Windows without any problems.

You don't like it? you can use Linux or buy a Mac. There are very credible alternatives today.

Edge is bundled with Windows and Chrome still has 80% of the market or more. I still don't see the problem.

What seems to happen in enterprises is they install Office 365... and Teams comes along.

A few months later the repeated suggestion of "Why don't you all switch to Teams?" from the MS account rep seems to sink in.

At that point the $0 price tag (when bundled with Enterprise 365) gets compared to Slack's fairly expensive per-user pricing... and it's Goodbye Slack.

So, the bundle gets it in the door (where no other competitor could) and the free pricing / sales channel gets it adopted.

The problem is that Slack wants to charge for a Chat app the same amount that Microsoft or Google charge for Spreadsheet, Documents, Slides, Chat, Drive, etc.

The problem is that Slack is too expensive for what they do. If Slacks value proposition was as good as their price ask, that wouldn't happen, or would be much lesser.

You said it yourself: Slack is fairly expensive for what they do.

> You said it yourself: Slack is fairly expensive for what they do.

Yep. It's hard to beat $0 and "already installed with O365".

Oh, you were wondering why MS is being investigated for anti-trust abuse... perhaps those are something to do with it?

What if they didn't bundle anything?

I installed Windows 11 this week and had to uninstall Teams, Spotify and others. Why are these even being bundled with the OS?

So Apple and Google can bundle the sh*t out of iOS and Android, which together have 99% of the cellphone market, but MS is expected to not do it?

Basically, yes. The fact that Apple and Google are still reasonably evenly fighting in the mobile market means that the rules are laxer for them than they are for MS who has far more dominant position in office suites.

That is why MS got under fire for IE but Safari got free pass. The degree of market control is critical aspect here.

In the last 5 companies that I worked at, all used Google Workspace.

Good for you

Yes they should both ship their phones with just a terminal and force everyone to ftp all of the applications they need.

Much easier for people struggling to install programs in general. Not that that is the real reason, of course.

Perhaps not bundling Teams with Office, or make Office products default to Teams, would be a start.

indeed, but it's a good start

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