UK Antitrust Regulator Is Officially Investigating Microsoft Office (engadget.com)
- Reference: 0183217343
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/05/14/1923223/uk-antitrust-regulator-is-officially-investigating-microsoft-office
- Source link: https://www.engadget.com/2172943/uk-antitrust-regulator-is-officially-investigating-microsoft-office/
> "Our aim is to understand how these markets are developing, Microsoft's position within them and to consider what, if any, targeted action may be needed to ensure UK organizations can benefit from choice, innovation and competitive prices," CMA Chief Executive Sarah Cardell said in a statement published by [3]Reuters .
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> She also stressed the importance of the investigation by noting that hundreds of thousands of UK residents use business software and Microsoft products. The organization will take a look into the company's cloud licensing practices. The CMA has stated that the inquiry will conclude by February. At that point, Microsoft could get slapped with a strategic market label.
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> Microsoft says it's "committed to working quickly and constructively with the CMA to facilitate its review of the business software market." A strategic market designation doesn't automatically assume wrongdoing, but will give the CMA more leeway when conducting further interventions.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cma-announces-package-of-actions-on-business-software-and-cloud-services
[2] https://www.engadget.com/2172943/uk-antitrust-regulator-is-officially-investigating-microsoft-office/
[3] https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/uk-opens-antitrust-probe-into-microsofts-business-software-2026-05-14/
Re: (Score:2)
Welcome to your new Microsoft Motors vehicle! When you buy one of our beautiful cars, you get the full integrated experience. The entertainment system is permanently welded to the engine. The tires are fused to the brakes. The seats talk to the steering wheel, which talks to the headlights, which only work properly if you’ve also subscribed to Microsoft Road+
Trying to install third-party tires? The car will immediately display a helpful pop-up: “Unlicensed rubber detected. Performance has bee
Isn't this about 25 years too late? (Score:3, Informative)
What are they hoping to achieve at this point?
Re:Isn't this about 25 years too late? (Score:4, Interesting)
> What are they hoping to achieve at this point?
My suspicion is that they're sending a message. Trump has been busy pissing away strategic alliances while he pisses off the rest of the world with his arrogance, presumptuousness, and American exceptionalism. Tech companies are collateral damage; except they're not really "collateral" when you consider their knee-bending, ring-kissing, and sometimes out-and-out support for Trump.
Just as Austria recently sent up fighter jets to "escort" unauthorized American military planes out of their airspace, the rest of the world is distancing and decoupling itself from the US. Big Tech was already suffering from a lack of trust; now America's other transgressions on the world stage have rendered everything American toxic. That's especially true of companies such as Microsoft that hold the keys to the information kingdom.
Other countries have had enough, and are actively seeking and/or building alternatives to companies and institutions which support American hegemony. Expect lots more news like this in the coming months and years.
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They are trying to make their exit from the MS crap easier. As the UK is not EU anymore, they have to do their own pushing.
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> They are trying to make their exit from the MS crap easier. As the UK is not EU anymore, they have to do their own pushing.
Not necessarily true, the current government is trying to align with the EU much more, to minimise the clusterfuck that is Brexit. They could couple with other countries in the EU (and Europe more widely) that are moving away from MS and other US technologies.
Now we just need to dump Palantir and Xitter as well...
Re: (Score:2)
> What are they hoping to achieve at this point?
Teams and OneDrive didn't exist 25 years ago. Even if they decided to force unbundling RIGHT NOW it still provides an opportunity for more competition in the market.
Wait, I've Seen This One! (Score:3)
This is the one where they investigate Office on Antitrust grounds and wind up settling for not bundling Edge.
I've seen it in reruns....
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I hope so! Except I want them to unbundle Outlook so my company will finally drop this steaming pile.
Until! (Score:2)
The proper $$$ gets into the right hands.
Re:Until! (Score:4, Insightful)
You're thinking of the US, I'm afraid. This is in the UK.
Holding everything together ... (Score:2)
Testimony from a disgruntled former [1]Office Assistant [wikipedia.org] -- who noticed they were opening an investigation, and offered to help.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Assistant
Fuck that (Score:2)
Bundling copilot hurt CONSUMERS who were slammed into paying more for useless shit they didn't ask for. And before you say "oh just opt out" please believe that I tried and they took the fucking copilot opt-out option away for my office license.
The trick is ... (Score:2)
They bundle everything together in Teams 365 Copilot Office Windows Edge that cannot be unbundled. It includes a toaster and a toothbrush too.
And the result. (Score:2)
After 5 years of study, 43 committees and 100,000 pages of reports, our conclusion is this. MS Office is crap.
Teams harms civilisation..... (Score:5, Informative)
by simply existing.
Re: (Score:2)
> by simply existing.
I mean... at least it's not Slack or Zoom. The competitors had a chance to do better and didn't.
Re: Teams harms civilisation..... (Score:2)
Yeah this. I use teams all the time and I'm not happy about it but it mostly works and it has a lot of features. Meanwhile zoom is highly likely to not work. Last time I tried to use it, both video and audio tested good, then NEITHER worked and I could only chat during the "call".
Re:Teams harms civilization..... (Score:4, Interesting)
>> by simply existing.
> I mean... at least it's not Slack or Zoom. The competitors had a chance to do better and didn't.
In 2022/2021Teams rapidly became popular with businesses once MS bundled it for free with 365 subscriptions despite users hating it. At the time it was a horrible application that was buggy, low quality conferencing, and had multiple versions that didn't interoperate (i.e Teams business and Teams personal different apps).
I remember quite clearly business users all complaining ("Ugh, Teams sucks") but they had no choice once their IT department got deals for Office with teams and then dumped their Zoom, WebEx, etc services despite them both being a lot better..
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To be fair, the WebEx GUI is a disease. WebEx used to be better than Teams, but now it's the other way around.
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> At the time it was a horrible application that was buggy, low quality conferencing, and had multiple versions that didn't interoperate (i.e Teams business and Teams personal different apps).
I disagree. ... It is still a horrible application that is buggy, low qualit.....
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Over the past years I've mainly used Zoom for video calls and was happy with it.
These days the company is more and more 'forcing' Teams for these calls (I work via the Brave browser on Linux).
The problem with Teams is I can't get the video on a separate window or screen, Zoom is by itself separate.
WebEx works for video but is hardly ever used.
Re: (Score:2)
In context of the article though, it's also pretty clear why Teams had a leg up. Integrating the rest of entire collaboration suite around the chat tool makes it more valuable.
Always felt that Slack missed an opportunity with integrating LibreOffice Online since it was LGPL/MPL licensed. Could have generated goodwill and made the offering more competitive.
Re:Teams harms civilisation..... (Score:4, Informative)
Oh seriously?
I use both Slack and Teams day to day (we use Slack internally, client uses Teams, so we are on both as a result).
Slack we never have any issues with, and can find information from previous conversations easily.
Teams? Fuck teams. Fuck it and then fuck it some more. Its slow, clunky, constantly has issues, very hard to find information unless you still have the chat open somewhere, and chats are spread all over the place (chats, teams, channels...). Teams also requires you to have access to the workspaces OneDrive and SharePoint as well if you want to share files, so if you dont have access to those things then ... you are limited to text only.
Its video call system is sorely limited, and even doing things like zooming in to the presenters shared screen is clunky and shit.
Teams is the worst collaboration system I have ever used, so dont try making out that its better than Slack or Zoom. It is by far the worst of the three.
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+10. Teams sucks, does not catch up to Slack at all, Slack runs around Teams in circles. Teams is a mess, I brutally have to delete all garbage chats every day, it feels like a chore. And then someone asks something, no can do, no idea what chat it was talked about in. Notifications either spams and interrupts every 5 minutes or you work past your meeting start. Pasting images is a lottery whether visible for others at all, screensharing is a +50 year age experience both visually and action delay, if it sha
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> Its video call system is sorely limited, and even doing things like zooming in to the presenters shared screen is clunky and shit.
It has a zooming feature? I wouldn't know because Teams is a bloated piece of crap that makes my work computer run slower than molasses flowing down hill on a cold day ... on fucking Pluto.
Seriously 8GB of RAM and my computer can't cope Outlook and Teams as being the only running applications. I have partial success when I turn off incoming video, but god knows sharing the screen is a disaster. You can run every office application at once and not consume as many system resources as making a Teams call.
I act
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While I don't *like* Slack, it stands out to me as distinctly less atrocious than Teams and anything else MS based. Zoom is garbage too.