Nextcloud boss: You gotta fight … for your right … to 'plug into Windows and offer the exact same service' It is a fine balancing act when a small business very publicly criticises a much larger one upon whose products it relies – yet that is the David-versus-Goliath standoff happening in a corner of the cloud industry. This week self-hosted productivity platform Nextcloud fired off an antitrust complaint to the EU concerning …
Choice is crucial, for sure, the The Cloud is never going to be a level playing field.
It was created by behemoths, and the little flies that flit around them will only be tolerated as long as they don't become a bother.
OneNote's integration into Windows, as much as it irks me, was obvious. Of course Borkzilla is pushing Teams and Office 365, you can't stop that.
It took over a decade and a legnthy trial to give us the possibility of having another browser than IE as default, and now Borkzilla is trying to tie Edge in again.
It's the nature of the beast.
I, too, agree, and I only use the cloud occasionally for docs that I might need on the move - tickets and suchlike. Forced use of iCloud to get stuff onto my mobile devices annoys the buggery out of me. However, I was surprised to find out recently when discussing the annoyance of cloud "integration" with a bunch of mates, that nearly all of them like it. They (mostly engineers of one sort or another) default to it and many of them pay for extra storage for things like photos. They think I'm a bit odd, with my offline storage, NAS synching, multiple backups and archive and safety drives.
This man looks to be still stuck in the 1990s somehow...
"somehow our cloud would not work on Windows anymore"
For now Microsoft would be much more careful about trying its olds tricks. It's much easier to be removed from iOS or Android stores for some unknown reasons, or be denied API calls on a mobile OS.
I may understand his friends ad LibreOffice have Office365 in sight, because they don't compete with online services like Google, but he looks a bit ridiculous going after MS only.
Moreover namespace extensions and shell extension have been well documented in the past twenty years at least - I remember making some money writing about them when printed IT magazines still paid you for such things...
Your mislabeling OneDrive as OneNote is illustrative. OneNote is integrated with Windows via Office 365 but is optional. OneDrive, OTOH, is necessary for Windows to provide that and other integrations. Ditto GoogleDrive and iDrive.
The customer's use of them is up to the customer. As an end user, I store and share documents and photos via Dropbox.
I can sympathize with NextCloud but their complaint seems to be one of convenience. If they themselves provided a competing service rather than just being a middle man to other services they would be on much firmer ground. Then they could make the kind of argument that browsers have made where Windows has to allow them to be designated as the default browser (with Windows still retaining IE and Edge for their internal integrations).
It's pretty rich for Nextcloud to be claiming they offer a competing service when Nextcloud doesn't actually have a consumer arm. If a regular user wanted to use Nextcloud they'd be directed to a partner website with multiple different hosting providers providing inconsistent services and features. Even if they succeeded non-technical users would default to Microsoft because of the ease of use and consistency. Nextcloud's hubris prevents it's ability to be a major player, not anti-trust.
If you want options, there are plenty of fine Linux distros available that will extend the life of your existing hardware, do everything you need, and let you configure anything and everything to your heart's content.
Don't expect a leopard to turn into an ewe just because you happen to be hungry.
"The earlier complaint left out Nextcloud's name for fear of retaliation. [...] 'if, at some point suddenly, somehow our cloud would not work on Windows anymore … we will be out of business.'"
Yes, and if Microsoft did cut off Nextcloud in some way, we would have a really big problem. That would be clearly illegal, and I think we would all agree it would be an unacceptable action. It's also a ridiculous leap. Microsoft could have done that before, as they could with other storage providers, and they've taken no steps in that direction whatsoever. They know it's illegal, and they should know enough to know that Nextcloud users would not switch to their product if they broke it. They're not about to break someone's product and incur the wrath of a competition authority in the hopes of a few hundred users. They could use a much easier and cheaper method to add OneDrive users who don't already have cloud storage.
The actual complaint might work, in that OneDrive does have icons on Windows when they're not in use. It's more annoying than anything, as nothing in Windows prevents me from adding as many competing cloud storage folders as I can find. Nextcloud will have to be clear about exactly which closed APIs and functions they wish to see opened. They do not help this point by alleging that Microsoft is planning to kill their Windows compatibility or blocks third parties from installing their software, because those things aren't true and they know it.
It may well be illegal - but by the time any case wound its way through the courts, a complainant the size of Nextcloud would have run out of cash and disappeared. MS would face some token punishment which would in no way reverse the damage they'd caused.
I.e. it wouldn't the first time they'd have used exactly that same trick.
And in Windows 11, they've gone back to the "our browser is the default and we've gone to some lengths to make sure it's hard not to use it" tricks. Same old leopard, same spots ...
Those "non-tech" users don't have any idea what you're even talking about when you prompt them to "Choose a cloud storage provider", so there has to be a default for those who don't know what to choose. Who else would that be except the OS provider that wants to make sure their user's data is backed up to some degree so they don't end up screaming about how their "computer caught a virus and ate their homework?"
It would be nice if users were educated and knew about all their options and choices out there, but they don't, and most of them aren't interested in trying anything else except the same email package they've used for a decade, the same browser they've used for over a decade, and Microsoft Word/Excel (if that much.)
Most users don't ask all that much of their computers. Too many people here post solely from the perspective of the technically literate; the vast majority of the world is far from literate on that front, even if they "know how to use their phone."
Hmm I don't think there HAS to be a default option; there SHOULD be a "here's a range of possibles , which would you like to use?" widget with a button for "Please pick one at random". - and if any costs are involved in using it, those need to be obvious prior to installation, current, and the user should be allowed to back out of teh installation, too.
Microsoft breaks their own products all the time, so I don't understand the responses here that they wouldn't break a competitor's product, because they wouldn't do anything illegal, because it's not the 1990s anymore, because ... oh shut up.
Microsoft doesn't give a flying F*** if NextCloud works on Windows. There's no need to break it on purpose, it will get broken anyway just by updating the APIs without telling anybody. What NextCloud wants is an open and stable API as a contract between Windows and client software that doesn't favor Microsoft's own client software. What Microsoft wants is the opposite. So does Microsoft get what it wants? That's the question at issue here.
"There's no need to break it [Nextcloud] on purpose, it will get broken anyway just by updating the APIs without telling anybody."
No, because Nextcloud runs their own service. They don't emulate OneDrive, so if Microsoft does change those APIs, Nextcloud will be unaffected. Windows does change, and it's the duty of any company making software to run on Windows to read the updates and deprecations so their software keeps working, but as companies go, Microsoft is pretty good with backward compatibility on such things. Can you point me to a single example where Microsoft broke Nextcloud's integration, intentionally or not?
"Microsoft breaks their own products all the time, so I don't understand the responses here that they wouldn't break a competitor's product, because they wouldn't do anything illegal, because it's not the 1990s anymore, because ... oh shut up."
Break your own product and your users are grumpy. Break someone else's product by accident, and people are still grumpy. Break a competitor's product on purpose, the competition authorities that care (which does include the EU's) can hand out a fine in the hundreds of millions, which they have done before. That's why they try not to break the law.
"What NextCloud wants is an open and stable API as a contract between Windows and client software that doesn't favor Microsoft's own client software."
And does what, precisely? Because most of the Windows APIs do that already. They have to be specific about what they think Windows is doing to negatively affect them. The only thing I can see at the moment is that OneDrive is present on all Windows installations, which they can argue is harming competition, but it's pretty minor. If they did something to prevent Nextcloud from working, the situation would be different, but they haven't and no APIs exist which give OneDrive powers that Nextcloud can't have.
I was wrong to say shut up, I should have self-moderated that bit. Thanks for not downvoting me, next time my boss starts hollering I will come back to proofread instead of clicking send.
I actually think NextCloud's arguments are a little thin: We're small and European, MIcrosoft is big and American, so please protect us from something (unspecified) they might do in the future.
But I lose patience with the idea that Microsoft wouldn't do anything shady. From my perch most big businesses skate as close to the edge as their lawyers will allow. They are especially prone to anti-competitive behavior because they can always try to argue special circumstances, they might get away with it, and even if they don't they might still make a net profit. It's one thing to say Microsoft hasn't done anything wrong, it's quite another to say they wouldn't.
- or as close as rather lax governments laws will allow. I'm still astonished that the EU allowed the practice of customers being forced to buy PCs with Windows pre-installed - the "Microsoft tax" - rather than PC vendors being required to offer customers a choice of operating systems, or none. Sure, the majroity of customers may well have gone with Windows anyway, but at least they would have known that there are alternatives.
Microsft may bundle one drive, and be super pushy about using it... But the apis ARE open and have been for years now. You have to provide your own sync engine and cloud... But the OS apis are there and not welded to onedrive. Microst knows exactly where the line is at. IOS on the other hand....
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