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A comment on Slack Files EU Competition Complaint Against Microsoft. Parent comment

Re:Slack Files EU Competition Complaint Against Microsoft by treis on Wednesday July 22, 2020 @10:09AM (#23917155)
>Teams is not preinstalled with Windows; it's part of a suite of products.

Most businesses are buying that suite for Word/Excel. Teams comes along with it for free from their perspective. That can definitely be anti-competitive.

I agree that Slack's case is pretty weak here. It's hard to see the harm to the consumer when Microsoft's bundle is cheaper than Slack's lowest paid plan.

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Re:Slack Files EU Competition Complaint Against Microsoft by coredog64 on Wednesday July 22, 2020 @11:31AM (#23918082)
Skype for Business (or whatever the legacy chat product is or has been called) dates back to 2007 and was typically present in your EA seat license bundle. Slack might be better than Skype, but it’s weird to suggest that getting into a market with an established history suddenly becomes anti-competitive only as soon as your competitor actually produces something that’s not a raging dumpster fire.
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Re:Slack Files EU Competition Complaint Against Microsoft by treis on Wednesday July 22, 2020 @01:28PM (#23919395)
Skype For Business was a separate product. It's only when rolling it into the office suite that it becomes problematic. And that is only because of the dominant position Word/Excel/PPT hold.

I personally don't think it's anti-competitive but I at least see the argument that can be made.

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Re:Slack Files EU Competition Complaint Against Microsoft by hcurtiss on Wednesday July 22, 2020 @01:57PM (#23919718)
Skype for Business has always been an Office 365 install.
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Re:Slack Files EU Competition Complaint Against Microsoft by treis on Wednesday July 22, 2020 @02:19PM (#23919967)
I definitely could be wrong but I thought at one point they were billed separately. Or at least there was a package you could get without Skype.
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Re:Slack Files EU Competition Complaint Against Microsoft by MangoCoffee on Wednesday July 22, 2020 @02:57PM (#23920365)
it was. two years ago i changed job and the current employer use Skype for business as it was part of Office 365. we moved off Skype when Windows Team roll out.
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Re:Slack Files EU Competition Complaint Against Microsoft by whywhywhywhy on Wednesday July 22, 2020 @12:17PM (#23918602)
If I buy Adobe Creative Cloud for Photoshop and Illustrator is it anti-competitive that I get Premier for "free"?
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Re:Slack Files EU Competition Complaint Against Microsoft by nojito on Wednesday July 22, 2020 @10:26AM (#23917341)
How is buying a productivity suite anti-competitive?

There is nothing stopping businesses from using Slack.

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Re:Slack Files EU Competition Complaint Against Microsoft by mortehu on Wednesday July 22, 2020 @11:26AM (#23918021)
You can't pay for Excel without also paying for Teams. Why would you pay for two team chat solutions?

Teams is not actually free for people who don't want the rest of Office.

That being said, I don't this should be illegal.

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Re:Slack Files EU Competition Complaint Against Microsoft by topkai22 on Wednesday July 22, 2020 @12:17PM (#23918604)
There is a free version of Teams now: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/microsoft-team...

Office web apps also have free tiers, although I don't know if there are business licensing restrictions.

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Re:Slack Files EU Competition Complaint Against Microsoft by IshKebab on Wednesday July 22, 2020 @10:43AM (#23917542)
Microsoft have a monopoly on office software. All businesses more or less have to buy Microsoft Office. Microsoft bundles Teams for free with it.

There is something stopping businesses from using Slack - the fact that Microsoft gives them Teams for free.

To be honest I doubt this will be a successful case. Companies get away with this all the time. I think the Windows/IE case is the only instance I've ever heard of something coming from it.

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