Slack Files EU Competition Complaint Against Microsoft

Re:Slack Files EU Competition Complaint Against Microsoft by athms on Wednesday July 22, 2020 @03:53PM (#23920873)

There has not been a free tier of GSuite since 2011. It is a commercial service that has a monthly cost per seat. There are 6 million users on GSuite for Business and 120 million on GSuite for Education. None of the grandfathered free Google Apps for Domains users are included in those numbers.

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Re:Slack Files EU Competition Complaint Against Microsoft by true_religion on Wednesday July 22, 2020 @04:48PM (#23921403)

Google sheets, et al are free for personal use while Office 360 is a subscription as far as I know.

The numbers given in the article specifically are users not paying customers. As quoted:

> Google's G Suite boss Javier Soltero... did not say how many of those 2 billion users were paid

Additionally it indicates that Office may have more paying users:

> Google said roughly one year ago that 5 million businesses are now paying for G Suite, which pales in comparison to Microsoft Office 365's 200 million monthly active users of its version for businesses.

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Re:Slack Files EU Competition Complaint Against Microsoft by athms on Wednesday July 22, 2020 @06:18PM (#23922220)

The conversation was about suites not individual applications. Even though you can use some of the separate GSuite applications for personal use, you cannot get GSuite for free. There is no free tier.

Likewise, there is no free tier of Office/Microsoft 365, but there are free services that are considered part of this suite. How many of the 200 million monthly active users are customers? How many users were paid? If a person uses the free tier of OneDrive, OneNote, or Skype they are not considered a customer even though they are an active user.

When you compare, you do like for like. The comparison is GSuite to Office 365, and many independent studies have said Google has a larger market share.

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