> Microsoft has illegally tied its Teams product into its market-dominant Office productivity suite, force installing it for millions, blocking its removal, and hiding the true cost to enterprise customers.
I feel like it's bad for a society to place no weight on agreements. “Force installing” is a pretty bold claim, given that Office is a piece of self-updating software that adds new components on a regular basis, and which says as much when you install it. Teams is a component of the Office suite in the same way that Microsoft's SSO system is.
If this point is considered to contribute to a successful claim, I think it says something sad about the EC.
European approaches to antitrust differ to the American approach. It is much more about fairness to market participants and the result is that we avoid Microsoft having an unchallenged avenue to dominance in yet another market. Optimising markets is a vital role of the state in any country where inhabitants don't want to see regulatory capture or market dysfunction (as with say, the American broadband and mobile data markets). It is likely to preserve choice, encourage innovation, and allow new market participants if Slack's case is accepted.
Adding a new component that is really difficult to disable or uninstall, auto-starts on boot and gets put in place without asking for everyone who uses your office suite, which you basically have a monopoly on, is bullshit. Teams is a component of the Office suite but it doesn't behave like the other components (staying out of the way until you ask for it).
“I want to install Discord, but without FFMPEG” is not grounds for a complaint.
I don't like Microsoft's software, nor do I use it, but if this is illegal and the Apple App Store isn't, the EC is none but a lawfare weapon for many-billionaire companies.
I feel like it's bad for a society to place no weight on agreements. “Force installing” is a pretty bold claim, given that Office is a piece of self-updating software that adds new components on a regular basis, and which says as much when you install it. Teams is a component of the Office suite in the same way that Microsoft's SSO system is.
If this point is considered to contribute to a successful claim, I think it says something sad about the EC.