This sure seems to say it's illegal to bundle any products together if a competitor for one of the products complains about it.
> This sure seems to say it's illegal to bundle any products together if a competitor for one of the products complains about it.
It's not bundling itself that's the issue. The use of one market to encroach on another is what's considered unfair competition. The fact that a competitor exists that just does one part of it is what makes the case that the two markets are separate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce)
""" The company doing this bundling may have a significantly large market share so that it may impose the tie on consumers, despite the forces of market competition. The tie may also harm other companies in the market for the tied good, or who sell only single components.
One effect of tying can be that low quality products achieve a higher market share than would otherwise be the case. """
> ...Zoom isn't prevented, consumers still can choose.
Only until Zoom fails because consumers who would have otherwise used Zoom were forced to pay for Teams instead because the price for Teams was bundled into the price for Office. At least, that's the argument.
To be clear, I'm not myself arguing either way. But the reason for the case is clear and it is disingenuous to pretend that it doesn't exist.
If a new competitor appears, the price drops again until they are driven away, then goes back up.
So initially it might be great for consumers because there is competition and there are choices. But it’s heading in the direction where consumers will be harmed.
This isn't about consumer protection. This is about petty people still trying to "get" Microsoft after 30 years, it's all so tiresome.
It had been a different story if Teams had always been a part of office, and slack came along and tried to compete. But come on this is a 100% clear cut abuse of a monopoly on windows office programs by Microsoft abused to outcompete a competitor that they couldn’t fight honestly.
Edit: wouldn't this mean that Apple could never have added a preinstalled app to the iPhone after the phones became successful?
And the hilarious part is that Slack is still crap in regards of video calls.
There are many steps involved: - identifying the relevant markets, probably something like office applications market and chat applications market. - whether the company has a dominant position on one (likely MS being dominant on the office apps market) - checking if a specific action could be considered as a abuse of dominant position, restricting the competition. Here it would be MS bundling the app, giving them an unfair advantage on the chat apps market.
They would likely be to assess the real damages to the market, whether or not competitors were able to do business or not, etc.
It's not all black or white, like any legal subject.
Yes I do have issues with blurry laws. My current country is not in the EU, though until recently I was a resident of an EU country also with blurry laws. Am I allowed to have an opinion now?
Again, most laws are blurry in a mathematical sense. This is the case since laws existed. And so and to a surprise for some HN people, we usually don't break them all day.
DMA is actually precise and rooted in competitions challenges all known. (E.g. the slack case was discussed very often) Complaining about the DMA is very strange. Also DMA targets big corpos, so needing a lawyer to understand all implications is again a none - issue.
It's that your replies in this thread show a complete lack of understanding and a refusal to take in multiple people patiently explaining to you.
Apart from your bizarre posture that calling out your low quality posting constitutes "silencing" you.
We may have different interpretations of the law, or different opinions on what we think the laws should be, but that doesn't mean I am bizarrely posturing with no understanding of the law.
I'd argue that its terrible from the angle of government overreach, this still seems well within the realm of a free market problem.
I'd also argue its terrible that corporate law is almost entirely boiled down to fines with no person really having to live with the consequences of their actions. That effectively makes it an accounting game, you're totally fine breaking the law as long as (a) its just a corporate expense and (b) you believe that you'll make more money breaking the law than you will lose in court.
Cases are also more unique. People get murdered "routinely" so everyone has figured out the clear lines. Antitrust doesn't happen as often and each case is unique.
Are you hoping for a world where corporations can find loopholes and it's impossible to punish them for exploiting the loopholes because we can only execute the law strictly like a computer program? Even ethereum smart contracts can be overturned - it happened once.
Corporate law as it stands today is more of a game of accounting, trying to figure out what laws you break and how you make more profit from it then you may lose in court. Is it really so important that our governments define these laws only to chase companies for legal cases that either amount to nothing or a fraction of the profits gained? Would we be better off either not having the laws at all, or by enforcing those laws with criminal penalty to those people shown to have knowingly made decisions to break the law?
> Would we be better off either not having the laws at all, or by enforcing those laws with criminal penalty to those people shown to have knowingly made decisions to break the law?
Yes to this part though. We shouldn't be writing laws enforcible in perpetuity when we can't even define what the law covers. How are citizens meant to stay on the right side of the law when the laws are purposely gray get still punishable after clarifying the details later?