EU accuses Microsoft of breaching antitrust rules by bundling Teams with Office

This essentially killed my (EU-based) startup in the project management and collaborate space. Before MSFT bundled Teams with O365 we were rapidly growing and closing enterprise customers in the automotive, energy and education industries with high retention rates. Right around the time the Teams bundling started our retention dropped, churn went through the roof, growth slowed down, we failed to raise our next round because of it and had to drastically downsize the company, causing even more churn (about 80% net churn in 2 years). This move by the EU is good, but too little too late - 99% of the companies that were hurt by this have already shut down, and the ones still running will take years to recover...

Teams is a pain in the neck! If you make an office calendar appointment for a zoom, Microsoft "helps" you by creating a teams invite in the text of the invitation that gets sent out. So there is always a chance someone you invite will click on the wrong link to be in the meeting. If you ever click on this link yourself teams will install on your system and try in the run in the background every time you boot your computer.

This is just hostile to the consumer. If I want teams I can install it.

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.

Why don't they apply the laws universally and effectively make this kind of bundling illegal for mega corporations? For endusers, it feels like they are playing with different rules for Microsoft Apple Adobe and Google. Since EU waits until the damage is done and milks them, it barely helps the situation for consumers. For corps they just assume the penalty as cost of doing business.

Maybe a push to eliminate proprietary operating systems and file formats from government-supported processes would be more effective? It could be legislative but it could also mean governments supporting FOSS development more.

Maybe it's wishful thinking, but this just seems to me like treating the symptoms instead of the root cause.

I already know how this will be solved: Microsoft will pay a (small) fine and file it under "the cost of doing business" while the damage is already done. Teams is one of the absolutely worst products ever programmed, it's hiliarious how bad it is. It only reached its market share because Microsoft gave it away "for free" with Office 365 or MS 365 or whatever it's called now.

It's a common pattern at several of the big software companies to bundle a lot of freemium stuff with their paid core products that then ends up squeezing independent providers of similar stuff.

I love Github. Before MS bought it I was a CTO at a company where we happily paid for it. Now MS offers it for free. I don't currently pay them anything. We also use Github actions. We don't pay for that either. You get 2000 free build minutes per month. So no need. That's great for us of course. But it's horrible for independent providers of CI services, which I used in the past. How can you compete when big companies like MS just pretend build minutes and hosting the world's software projects costs 0$?

I say pretend here because of course in reality MS spends a lot of money on all that infrastructure needed to do that. But they make their money elsewhere. This is just an anti competitive move to ensure enough customers end up paying them. It's a lock in mechanism. But it's also an anti competitive move. It ensures competitors don't stand a chance. Because how do you compete with free?

Of course the flip side is that a lot of things in software become commodities where the price of something goes to zero quickly after the open source world starts providing free and open source alternatives. Zoom is a great example of a commodity with little intrinsic software value. There's very little in there that you can't replicate with free and OSS components. Most of the real cost relates to infrastructure and networking.

Which of course like Github isn't actually free. So MS is subsidizing the cost of having massive amounts of companies run all their meetings on Teams with money they squeeze out of them elsewhere via unrelated products. That's what the EU called out as anti competitive. Microsoft spends many millions/billions on ensuring people get locked into their free offerings just so they can continue to be valued at trillions because of all the revenue they get from us elsewhere. This is not charity. That's how they became this big.

IMHO Gitlab would have strong case too. They are a European company actually (Dutch originally). So this is a clear cut case of a local competitor being squeezed out of the market by MS spending large amounts of money ensuring there is no market.

What's the difference between anti-competitive bundling, and developing seamless integrated experiences?

If this is anti-competitive, is it anti-competitive for Apple to bundle music features/up-sell into the iOS UI, or provide an interface for headphones that no other manufacturer can integrate with?

They don't just bundle it, they make it auto-start on screen on Windows machines whether you've got an account or not.

Government should just require open communication protocols/file formats, if a competitor is willing to host the same data at cost.

Client applications should compete on their individual merits, not coast on protocol lock-in.

Would WhatsApp or YouTube have as many users if others could build clients for the same data? (PII etc notwithstanding)

Protocols compete on the merits of the protocol, clients compete on the merits of the client.

I think this will be the reality/obvious a few decades down the line.

I’m curious what materially changed beyond Slack complaining.

Microsoft has long bundled Lync/Skype-for-Business with Office 365. Hell it did that, I’m pretty sure, before Slack even existed.

If you "just want chat" but are required to use Teams at work, you might try pidgin[1] with the MS Teams plugin[2]. The former can be installed via scoop and therefore does not require admin priveleges to install.

This thing still works, and works better than ever, with plugin for modern chat services available.

1: https://www.pidgin.im/

2: https://github.com/EionRobb/purple-teams

It is a common comment on HN to say Teams is rubbish and also to ask why anyone would use it. Now we have a problem of market dominance, which demonstrates by how far the HN bubble misunderstands how ordinary people do their day to day business. This is the vacuum MS have been consistently winning in for several decades now, it would be worth you understanding it.

Now someone is about to reply that market dominance doesn't mean your app is best. If you think that in this case then you are still missing the lesson. Teams integrates with Windows OS, Azure AD, SharePoint, OneDrive, PowerPoint and Outlook in a way that is so much more useful to ordinary people than anything the other messengers do. Much of that integration is available to any app developer but they choose not to use them so continue to fall behind. Sure there will be some things Slack are not currently getting an API for, but so so much more that they don't use but could, because they don't see why it is important for users.

These rulings happen way too late, the damage is already done.

Maybe if Slack offered proper video conferencing tools it would not complain. Should ask Zoom for advice.

Seems a little odd given that they unbundled it in Europe.

Oh well. I guess it's time for Microsoft to discontinue Teams, destroy any related IP, purge any copies from GitHub/developer workstations/backups, forcibly uninstall it from end-user machines, update Windows to forcibly delete any copies installed in the future, and never, ever, ever under any circumstances try to compete in the chat/video conferencing market ever again. The world will survive, if just barely.

Why are the tying laws not enforced in the US, or Canada, or the many other jurisdictions where it's illegal for a monopoly to tie products together; and why does it not apply to the tying of Word and Excel or other apps in the Office suite that use to be sold independently and complete with independent products (Lotus 123, Wordperfect)

When a company’s initial interview is on Teams I see it as a bad sign. If a company forces you to use Windows for your dev machine it’s a red flag.

If a company forces you to use a Citrix instance for your dev machine honestly run away screaming and take your sanity with you.

But the basic digital regulations are still missing:

Enforcement of noscript/basic (x)html interop (no massive and grotesquely complex big tech web engines required), minimal file formats (for instance utf8 text), png for images (I have suspicions of unstable complexity with webp).

This is not perfect, and sometimes there is kind of nothing: printing oriented file formats is an issue: pdf/ps. PDF was kind of highjacked at ISO by msft putting complexity at its core, even "programming complexity" there.

I wonder how complex are PS/PDF(max 1.4 I guess), because you know big tech wants the possibility to code a _real-life_ alternative to be a nightmare.

It feels like regulators are trying to solve the problem at the wrong end. Whenever you hear about an antitrust ruling, it's "bundling". IE was the same, now this.

In my opinion, the problem is when a company is happy to eat the losses for a while, in hopes of killing competition and then raising the price when they are alone in the market. Clouds, ride hailing apps... It's fine to price your product at "zero", as long as you hold that price after you become a monopoly.

The problem for regulators is they can't force a price, nor judge on all the externalities that are included in it.

I don't understand how Microsoft gets under fire so easily, but Google bundles everything in Android, and you can't even uninstall most of them (maps, gmail etc.). Same with iphones. This is regulatory tipping the balance.

Here's what I don't get. Almost everyone I talk to hates Teams. But they use it anyways. Nothing is stopping them from using Zoom or Google Meet, or some other alternative. Yes, these other alternatives have their own problems and tradeoffs. But Teams is just substantially worse than these alternatives. I'll take a Google Meet meeting any day over Teams crap.

Nothing is forcing people to use Teams, but they do. It can't solely be cause it's just bundled and free. People don't want to spend any effort to do better? Is the friction that high?

They should get rid of Edge and a few other stuffs too. Is there a tool to conveniently remove any feature I do not want? Googled around and looks like Powershell is my only reliable option -- and still I cannot remove Edge.

Google did this with Meet. Bundled, over-ride zoom invite with Meet and other stuff that seems very similar to these MS moves. Wonder how/why they don't get similar treatment.

Did they prevent OEMs from tampering with the system install image by adding apps that compete with Teams or from removing Teams?

Are they fascistly on notice for market cap, not antitrust offense?

Is the remedy that EU dominates MS until their market share is acceptable, or did MS prevent others from installing competing apps on the OS they and others distribute?

In the US, no bundling applies to ski resorts working in concert with other ski resorts. Materially, did MS prevent OEMs or users from installing competing apps?

If Teams and Outlook become clunkier because of the EU, that will be a really irritating problem...

Maybe they should address the free cloud credits next, which are a great way to lock you in and kill competition. Just like the bundling of Teams, they might be good for (business) customers in the short term, but will only lead to future monopolies.

The EU step is complete. Now get all your co-workers and random people in your company to stop scheduling stuff in Teams (better yet, just stop having meetings - a day of them gets mind-numbing, having them practically every day is painful.)

I never understood how Microsoft giving you software you are not forced to use is bad, but apple limiting which software you can run on your device is not.

From anti user perspective MS does a lot worse than adding teams - mandatory online accounts to begin with.

You'd expect them to have learnt the lesson with Internet Explorer but, as someone said, there is no way a man will understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it!

I would like to see US regulators bring the hammer down on “platform” tech companies who leverage their power in one market, such as operating systems, to gain massive, unearned competitive advantage in unrelated markets.

Office is bad enough. One reason we’re stuck with the very bad Excel (gives wrong answers) is that you got Office because you want to use less offensive products like Word and Powerpoint so you already bought Excel.

Literally everything from Microsoft is bundled in some anti competitive way. Edge and Windows. Teams and Office. Excel and Word. GitHub and VS. One Drive and Windows. All of it must be forced to split up and operate as separate companies. It is the ONLY way to not distort the market. Additionally, fines must be enacted RETROACTIVELY, along with jail time for executives. Enough is enough.

Very similar to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40787842 on the front page today.

Good. In our small company of two dozen people we use Teams only because of external clients. Otherwise we do away with Google Workspace and self-hosted stuff like GitLab.

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

I’m afraid this won’t convince my enterprise that now they do not have to scrap that annoying Slack line item.

More importantly, could the EU get Microsoft to actually fix Teams so that it isn't a giant pile of shit.

IMO, Teams is a logical extension of the Office tool suite and had every right to be bundled. I suspect there is a whole bevvy of bureaucrats in the EU whos sole job has been to bring anti trust legislation against Microsoft for the last 30 years - somehow funding itself, not preventing a Monopoly, and failing to create a more competitive marketplace.

And I guess the next one will be OpenAI trash (aka Bing chat enterprise or something) bundled in O365

Ask forgiveness.

Did Microsoft already wipe out Slack during these four years of bundling since the complaint of 2020?

Why is it okay for Office to include Word, Excel, or PowerPoint but not a chat application? Does the EU get to decide what is reasonably considered part of a productivity suite? Or is the only requirement that a competitor complains?

This sure seems to say it's illegal to bundle any products together if a competitor for one of the products complains about it.

Wait, so then is it ALSO illegal to tie FaceTime to iOS?

And whatever the Google thing is called with Gmail?

No shit. The only real surprise is that it took years for gov officials to recognize this. On the other hand, Teams is the worst thing that could have happened to work communication efficiency.

Needed Word on Mac – you can’t imagine how surprised I was to see Skype starting too.

Google’s inability to create a chat app allowed them to dodge this bullet.

Official EU commission release: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_...

If the EU is working on a time machine, Lotus Notes might be their next target!

Mcdonalds breached antitrust by bundling fries and coke.

now get them for the local account thing, onedrive integration, privacy and all the other shit.

Just wait till they find out about how the enterprise deals work. Free windows licenses with Office 365, with retroactive blowup clauses that charge the back-dated windows licensing fees if you ever stop using Office 365

To me these type of cases has always been BS, especially since not every company gets the same treatment. Next, they should ask Tesla to give its customers the choice of the autopilot software its car runs...

The zombie corpse of slack welcomes this ruling

Awesome, now do Adobe and Autodesk next. How is Creative Cloud not an anti-competitive bundle under the same description? Why do we ignore the particularly egregious exploiters of customers? Should Apple computers not have messenger built in? Should Google Workspace remove Meet? What are the actual rules because they seem to just apply to whomever the EU wants to shake down any given year.

I thought this was going to be about bundling Teams in O365 and other biz deals.

It's wild to me that Teams is so fucking horrible that many businesses who effectively get it for free as part of other dealings still choose to pay for Slack.

Sadly I know of many, many more companies where the offer is indeed too good to refuse, much to the disappointment of their workforce.

I was helping out at a place where two employees needed Word and Excel licenses, and somehow they got a massive, free Teams license out of it.

Adjacent point, but I recently bought a Windows laptop (after 10 years on Mac). I've been blown away by the sheer amount of advertising & upsells at OS level. Some of it you can turn off, but others you can't seem to (for me at least). I don't ever remember Windows feeling like you're borrowing it from MS.

EU keeps on delivering today!

More countries should exit

The EU exists to subsidise EU businesses by taxing (fining) American ones.

Why is it okay to sell a bundle that has spreadsheets and emails but not messaging and conferencing?

Hate teams! I have heard many friends quit companies as they could not stand using teams after companies abandoned slack to jump on the free teams bandwagon. They had to hire Microsoft experts to manage the IT infrastructure which was just auto-managed before Microsoft sold them the stack.

What market are they monopolizing by having Teams auto start?

You could make this argument about any bundling.

All of the 365 products as well as similar from Adobe etc have been bundled in ways to lock out competition. Even Spotify is planning to.

At some point EU needs to bring clarity to their competition laws and decide what they want the landscape to look like. Because right now they are just making up the rules as they go.

Soon the EU will charge parents for giving their children undue advantages as well.

In all seriousness - giving yourself an advantage is obviously what all companies want to do.

Why doesn’t the EU just, for each company, say exactly what they want? I honestly don’t understand the EU - they don’t want any company to do anything to have an advantage compared to their competitors?

Seems like an exercise in mediocrity. I guess par for the course given all of the EUs top companies were all started last century. Clearly out of touch.

Edit: wow the top 15 EU companies by revenue are utilities or auto.