[teitoklien]

That’s how monopolies get formed, make it unsustainable for competition to exist, and then jack up prices when they all die.

That lower cost people pay upfront thanks to monopolies, is then drained back with interest, using higher prices, reduction in social mobility (of new founders/startups), reduction in innovation & increase in rent-seeking behaviour.

Breaking up monopolies has been long overdue, it’s a good thing its starting now.

[kwanbix]

You can choose to also use slack, or the OP app, if you think the beneffit you get by using the app is greater than the value of paying for it. Nobody is preventing you. Since MS included it for free, is not like you can not pay for the other app because you used the money to pay for teams. I personally don't see the value on slack, but like I said before, I have worked at companies where we had both, office/slack or gw/slack.

[jadengeller]

it's not a great market for consumers if we allow big business to undercut pricing and kill competition

government should help us coordinate to prevent this Nash equilibria

[Wytwwww]

> undercut pricing and kill competition

Yeah but nobody minded not having to pay for web browsers, file manager, antivirus software and bunch of other stuff.

Companies have been bundling their different software products together since almost forever and while there are some disadvantages arguable this has benefited consumers overall. At least I wouldn't be too glad about having to buy separate licenses (or pay separate subscriptions) for Excel, Word and PowerPoint (or any other product bundle like Jetbrains IDEs for every language etc. etc.).

Most people would also not rather get a non-functional barebones OS whenever they get a new PC and have to chose and install all the basic apps themselves.