[krisoft]

You are absolutely right. To me this kind of bundling is absolutely infuriating. I wish we could literally outlaw it.

At work we just transfered from zoom to google meet. We did this while everyone who expressed an opinion agreed that zoom is simply a superior product. And we did it because “we are already paying for it with our google docs subscription”.

It is just so anti-competitive I can’t even believe we collectively let this happen.

[buildbot]

What's the alternative though? I don't like anti-competitive behavior at all, however thinking about what the regulation would be, I am just not sure there is any viable way. You have a few cases where the EU will go after whoever for bundling a browser, which is not really a solution. Are companies only allowed to sell products individually and never discount or bundle anything? What is a "complete" product? Is it Office? Word? Windows? - Which the EU has already said is conglomerate of products given the whole IE thing. It seems tricky.

[maronato]

I don’t see how it’s anticompetitive. It’s not like Microsoft or Google make it harder to use Slack or Zoom.

In fact, Google makes it really easy to integrate Zoom into Google calendar, and Microsoft has slack integrations for all their products. One can even argue that the office experience in slack is better than in Teams.

That’s very pro-competition IMO.

[placatedmayhem]

Offering a product for free or a significant discount with another product where a company has a substantial portion of that market to get a foothold and kill off competition in the free-/cheap-product's market is called "bundling" in anticompetitive regulations.

Indeed, this is exactly what is happening with Teams compared to, say, Slack (which is generally regarded as the better team chat) or Zoom (better video conferencing).

Read more here: https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...

[proamdev123]

This link doesn’t say what you’re saying it does. From the link:

> For competitive purposes, a monopolist may use forced buying, or "tie-in" sales, to gain sales in other markets where it is not dominant and to make it more difficult for rivals in those markets to obtain sales. This may limit consumer choice for buyers wanting to purchase one ("tying") product by forcing them to also buy a second ("tied") product as well.

Teams is free, whether it’s obtained with Office or downloaded separately.

Giving away a product for free doesn’t violate anti competition regulations.

[placatedmayhem]

Teams is not free. It's been bundled for free with certain enterprise contracts. Here's list pricing for Teams:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/compare-micr...

[PeterStuer]

Remember Internet Explorer? Also a 'free' product whose bundeling ran afoul of anti competition regulation.

[cvalka]

Zoom and Slack shall die. Good riddance to both of them.