Hacker News Reader

Comment by colonwqbang | Hacker News Reader

Apple still charges extra for the Apple music service, right? Spotify costs $12/month, Apple music costs $11. If that's true then it seems market competition is working decently in that area. If you could launch a competing service and charge $10 you might have a chance.

What Microsoft did was, they said "Hey we have a monopoly on office software. We should have a monopoly on chat too". And they started giving away Teams for "free" i.e. all companies who were paying for an Office subscription were suddenly paying for Teams too with no way to opt out. How is someone going to compete, when most of their potential customers are already forcibly subscribed to a "good enough" competing service.

It was especially egregious here because Teams was such an inferior product so it probably won in no small part due to this tactic.

View on HN

Feels a bit like your forgetting Skype for business and lync already existed. I kinda agree with your point but I also feel it’s unfair on Microsoft, they are giving their customers more services for the same price, and the customers are using the services… I’m not sure the customer really loses out if ms are saving them another subscription + integration cost.

There is no justification, this is just more thinly-veiled rent-seeking from the EU.

Rent-seeking since 1995!

Right, the EC is desperate to get that fraction of a percent of its budget from that pure, innocent, freedom-loving American company. Makes complete sense…

What is actually happening is that the American government is dysfunctional and can’t be arsed to do its job.

The fines the eu want are percentages of global revenue, so will be significant sums of money. Maybe they are not so bothered about the money but want to disadvantage the us corperations.

For me the US has largely got it right and EU wrong. You can see this in the number of EU based tech giants. Would the EU be bringing these laws if Apple / google were European?

Welcome back, I missed the fearmongering you were so well-known for back when the EU Commission announced their investigation. You're probably someone with a sizable 401k or Roth IRA, I'm guessing?

> I’m not sure the customer really loses out if ms are saving them another subscription + integration cost.

Not only the customer will pay the price 10 fold down the line, the entire industry/ecosystem will suffer after Microsoft effectively kill every alternative product.

They're not doing the customers a favor. It's a business 101 tactic to dominate the market. In the end, the customer will be abused and strangled with no other option to turn to.

Is it not a case the market will fix - if Microsoft increases costs in an attempt to strangle the customer, the higher prices create an opportunity for new players?

I'm not saying MS don't do shady stuff, but why single this out? YouTube is a monopoly on video and they bundle Music with Premium. Just seems like this is happening everywhere all the time.

YouTube desperately needs an antitrust hammering and everyone knows it.

> I'm not saying MS don't do shady stuff, but why single this out?

It’s an action started by Teams competitors. They have no interest in chasing YouTube. OTOH, the EC is definitely chasing more than one company, it’s all over the news. Google is scrutinised regularly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com