Hacker News Reader

Comment by ankit219 | Hacker News Reader

Somehow I wonder if this is indeed protectionism. Slack filed a complaint against Microsoft too, but no action has been taken on that. Having said that, it took five years and three pivots for EU to arrive at this decision. So, wonder how long it will take for Slack to come through.

View on HN

I doubt it. Could be a soft factor, but at the end of the day this (and other rulings) are consumer related.

This being suspicious against the EU mindset is amusing. From a European perspective, the US has enormous influence, the arrow clearly points in the other direction. EU politicians are often desperate to please the overlords to the west, and very little if any pressure is exerted to protect EU interests. Also EU is uncoordinated, and doesn’t act like a unified force at all.

Take the Pirate Bay trial for another example. That was proven to be a US media industry hit job. Lots of things like that. The US hints at sanctions and everyone loses their minds.

Make no mistake, modern US corporations untangled from pesky regulations are still screwing over Americans the most. This “the Europeans are up to something” is amusing in the face of an absolute massacre of the middle class at home, with things like healthcare-insurance-prescription cartels being probably the most egregious example.

Interestingly, in the US, the middle class only shrank because the upper class grew.

Slack's case is an obvious example of Microsoft using their dominant platforms to stifle competition. Microsoft basically cloned Slack, then bundled it with Windows and Office. If this doesn't merit huge fines, I don't know what does.

Yeah, Microsoft is just as bad.

Slack and Zoom should have good cases over the Teams bundling tbh.

The "Open"AI investment and sudden shift from a non-profit is crazy too.

Exactly. It was a slam dunk case with any criteria. They cloned the product, bundled it free with other apps, and later as a standalone product, priced it at half of slack's pricing. Completely killed the market for slack.

Why should Slack's later complaint come before Spotify's earlier complaint? Besides, it is not like all cases take the same amount of time.

It seems that the Slack complaint came after Spotify's ? (even though both are taking too long IMHO, only giants can afford waiting this much.)

This is absolutely protectionism. The EU rent-seeks from American tech while avoiding punishing any EU company. Ask any artist if Spotify is a monopoly!

It seems more plausible that America is neglecting to regulate their duopoly because it benefits them. Europe has multiple examples of Apple ignoring municipal orders and is justified in targeting Apple with legislation. If you want to accuse protectionism, the United States has the most to lose if domestically-bugged hardware falls out of market favor.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com