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Comment by xzjis | Hacker News Reader

The problem is that it's already too late. In my company, we used Teams because it was "free" (they even added a free version that lasted between COVID-19 and 2023), bundled with everything else, and now that we have to pay for Teams alone, we won't consider switching to something else because people are used to Teams. We never considered an alternative, and we will never consider one, and it's just more expensive for us now (which is Microsoft's way of complying with EU's rules, so Microsoft's fault).

Antitrusts are too slow to happen.

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Hate to break it to you but even if they broke out pricing and SKU, the MS rep is going to offer Teams a separate product and majority of the time bosses will buy it out of convenience. Why bother evaluating slack/zoom when mail, calendar, files,call recording and transcript are integrated with Teams especially for old school companies

Exactly this, the current top comment decries how their sales were affected by Teams, but there is no moat on video-calling software. Without a unique proposition disruption was bound to come knocking. Apple bundles Team's-like functionality with FaceTime, but it's not being targeted. The EU's position is largely driven from who is successful.

But what is success? Anyone who has a pre-existing relationship with the customer is going to be able to have the opportunity to inform the customer about their new products, brand trust and convenience go a long way in co-selling.

People that make basic apps frequently complain that they have had their app "stolen" when a, typically larger, competitor releases similar functionality. However was it truly their "idea", or were they just an early entrant that squandered their early lead?

The majority of ordinary computing functions of today started out as 3rd party applications, some churn is expected - I don't see it as innovation if we give companies false monopolies on ideas. If Apple can't protect the iPhone paradigm as a unique combination of features, no one should expect to keep possession of simpler or smaller ideas.

In some companies yes, but in other ones when comparing two similarly priced products, the decision will be made based on something else than just a budget.

Currently often the narrative is “we have it included for $0, why would we pay $100 per year per employee for a similar product?”

Not Microsoft’s fault in any way. EU is legally requiring them to charge more. Unless you know a way they could comply with the rules (which state they can’t charge less) without charging more?

By charging the same amount for a bundle of Office + Teams and a lesser amount for Office without Teams.

Ah, the pipe dream approach to argumentation.

As a Microsoft shareholder, I can say I’m damn glad they didn’t go the “let’s devalue our core value propositions” path.

> because it was "free"

Being "free" wouldn't have had this effects.

It happened because "they already paid for it" (because of paying for office 356) and because it was "already installed" (kinda).

Also it's one vendor less (some companies care about that a lot).

But IMHO the whole office suite pricing is pretty absurd and unlikely to be based on proper working fair marked, likely even if you remove teams from it.

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