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Comment by worksonmine | Hacker News Reader

I hate on Microsoft every chance I get, but how is this situation different than Google bundling Meet on Android? Should Google be worried?

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I have been on android for 10+ years and never has Meet gotten in my way or even launched itself.

It's totally uncomparable. Also google is not actively pushing it's customers to use it to kill their competitors

The issue is not that "Microsoft bundled Teams" but rather that Microsoft came to companies like mine at the time and essentially said "We are deprecating Skype and we are offering this resource-hungry, bug-ridden program called Teams as only replacement. You don't have to use it, but we'll bill you for it anyway".

They knew full well that the average IT department would not approve paying for a second tool and offered no "discount" if you didn't want to use it. It was take it or take it.

My only complaint is that this didn't happen sooner, but I'll cut them some slack for not taking swift action during the notably-unremarkable year 2020.

The issue in your scenario is the ineptitude of the IT department/company leadership.

I don't think Meet is bundled with Android by Google, it's not there if you use LineageOS. It's probably an individual choice by phone makers (although maybe not a completely free choice).

I do agree it shouldn't be bundled of course. But even Chrome isn't bundled for example, so I don't think Google is actually pushing many apps.

It's bundled with all the other Google apps - eg. The play store, docs, search etc.

OEM's have to ship them all or none of them.

I've never ever had Meet bundled with any of my phones in my years of using android. On my latest S22, obviously the play store is there but the only other core Google apps that were installed were calendar, chrome, fit, Gmail, Google (the main "app" that probably bundles in the assistant and stuff like that), play music, maps and a couple of others. There was no meet and I can still uninstall calendar

I don't think Meet is bundled with Android. My pixel didn't come with it. It is bundled with some chromebooks.

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