Microsoft may stop bundling Teams with Office amid antitrust probe threat

Microsoft is offering to stop bundling web conferencing and messaging app Teams with Office software to stave off the threat of a full-blown antitrust investigation by European Union regulators. Industry figures close to the situation told The Register this is a positive first step toward leveling the playing field for …

[steviebuk]

Edge

I want them to stop their anti-trust bollocks with Edge. Making it, on Windows 11, a lot more difficult to change the default browser so non techs won't bother. When you do it asks if you're REALLY sure and that Edge is great. And when you use Edge to look for another browser it shows you at the top that "Use Edge instead".

Fucks.

[John Riddoch]

Re: Edge

Technically it's Bing which shows the "There's no need to download a new web browser" bit, although as that's the default search engine on Edge, most people will get it pushed into their faces.

Trust Edge. Edge is your friend.

[Strahd Ivarius]

Re: Edge

Don"t worry, in the next version if will be ChatGPT that will switch automatically your default browser to the proper one...

[cyberdemon]

"Edge is Chrome, with the added (anti)trust of Microsoft"

> Technically it's Bing which shows the "There's no need to download a new web browser" bit, although as that's the default search engine on Edge, most people will get it pushed into their faces.

Nope! It's not just Bing, Edge itself is guilty of putting unauthorised advertising on competitor's websites.

https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/23/microsoft_edge_banner_chrome/?td=rt-3a

You can go to `google.com/chrome` in Edge, no Bing required, and it will put a banner at the top, with no advertising agreement in place, telling you that Edge is just like Chrome, but more "trustworthy" because it's Microsoft.

I'm no fan of Google, but Microsoft really seem to have stopped caring what people think of them. It's War on privacy and War on users who like their privacy. Any user who doesn't trust us, is, frankly, forced to. (Oh guess who owns the secure boot keys for all your favourite Linux distros.. Would be a shame if they stopped working, maybe you'd like to use WSL instead, it's much easier and with the added trust of microsoft!) And if they still won't trust Microsoft then they must be a terrorist.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "aside about secure boot"

> Oh guess who owns the secure boot keys for all your favourite Linux distros.. Would be a shame if they stopped working,

Well if I look at the secure boot keys on my box

firmware keys:

PK:

/CN=HPE UEFI Secure Boot 2016 PK Key/OU=CODE-SIGN/C=US/O=Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company

KEK:

/CN=SUSE Linux Enterprise Secure Boot CA/C=DE/L=Nuremberg/O=SUSE Linux Products GmbH/OU=Build Team/emailAddress=[e-mail]

/C=US/ST=Washington/L=Redmond/O=Microsoft Corporation/CN=Microsoft Corporation KEK CA 2011

/CN=HPE UEFI Secure Boot 2016 KEK Key/OU=CODE-SIGN/C=US/O=Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company

db:

/C=US/ST=California/L=Palo Alto/O=VMware, Inc./CN=VMware Secure Boot Signing

/C=US/ST=California/L=Palo Alto/O=VMware, Inc.

/CN=SUSE Linux Enterprise Secure Boot Signkey/C=DE/L=Nuremberg/O=SUSE Linux Products GmbH/OU=Build Team/emailAddress=[e-mail]

/C=US/ST=Washington/L=Redmond/O=Microsoft Corporation/CN=Microsoft Windows Production PCA 2011

/C=US/ST=Washington/L=Redmond/O=Microsoft Corporation/CN=Microsoft Corporation UEFI CA 2011

/O=Hewlett-Packard Company/OU=Long Lived CodeSigning Certificate/CN=HP UEFI Secure Boot 2013 DB key

/CN=HPE UEFI Secure Boot 2016 DB Key/OU=CODE-SIGN/C=US/O=Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company

They seem to list SUSE Linux above Microsoft. These are the factory loaded keys.

So I guess if MS stopped signing the shim.efi file SUSE could do it as well.

I'm not running SUSE, this particular box is actually running dead rat, but most of mine are on Alma these days.

I keep meaning to workout how I can get the public key stuff to let me use shimx64-redhat.efi, or any other distros equivalent file.

[Binraider]

Re: Edge

+1 for the Paranoia reference.

Serve the computer.

[AMBxx]

Re: Edge

That must be why Edge has such a huge market share.

[sabroni]

Re: Edge

So why is it OK for Google to tell everyone who lands on their search results to use Chrome? Have you tried installing Edge on a Chromebook?

[parlei]

Re: Edge

How many wrongs does it take to make a right?

[yetanotheraoc]

Re: Edge

"How many wrongs does it take to make a right?"

That's what Microsoft is tryng to find out.

[Captain Scarlet]

Re: Edge

Its not but the main difference is that its on Google own website, not a competitors.

I hate this but I hate injection of pleading to stay with the browser even more.

[Dave K]

Re: Edge

At least that's their website. I understand Microsoft.com advertising Edge and Windows at me. Imagine however if you browsed using Chrome to Mozilla's web page only to be plastered with ads about "Use Chrome, it's way better!". Or if you visited Microsoft.com and it gave you a big embedded advert for Chromebooks instead.

Like I say, this isn't advertising on your company's own website, it's identifying URLs from competitors to hijack them and push your company's own stuff.

[hoola]

Re: Edge

How is unbundling Teams going to help?

For business users it is pretty much the default tool because it is part of the same supplier matrix.

You could have the same argument for Excel or Word.

As you say, the web browser and the way it is hooked into so many parts of the OS so that even if you change the default, it still opens reams of stuff in Edge.

Then look at the other bits like pdf and so on. Since when did the browser become the default for that.

[MattPi]

Re: Edge

Then look at the other bits like pdf and so on. Since when did the browser become the default for that.

When Adobe made Acrobat Reader such trash that everyone built their own version.

[Antron Argaiv]

Re: Edge

Who among us has not been in the middle of a presentation when the giant, all-obscuring "UPDATE ACROBAT?" pop-up box has appeared?

It's almost like they wait until it will create the most annoyance. And Acrobat seems to be installed by default, way too much. One of the first pieces of crapware I delete. I use PDF X-change.

[RegGuy1]

Re: Edge

They should unbundle the OS from their products...

Oh wait. Then their business model will collapse as their software will have to be GOOD.

I understand now.

[Sammy Smalls]

Saturation point reached.

They've probably hit, or are close to, their saturation point for Teams, so this offer doesnt really hurt them as much as an anti-trust suit might. They are far enough ahead that it will take anyone - Zoom, Slack, Webex - a long time to make any significant inroads into the Teams lead.

The other piece of the puzzle is the integration into Office. Sure, it's not bundled (maybe), but it will have the best Office integration. (or should).

What the EU should do is force an open standards integration. Now that would be fun. Mind you, we'll just end up with and ODF/DOCX situation.

End result..... no change.

ugh. I'm going back to bed.

[Dinanziame]

Re: Saturation point reached.

If I understand correctly, the DMA does have provisions that messaging apps should somehow interoperate. If that's correct, it's going to be very interesting.

[ludicrous_buffoon]

Re: Saturation point reached.

If they wheeled out NetMeeting again, which followed standards and came with much less bloat and more or less the same feature set as Teams, I'd be a happy man.

[Anonymous Coward]

More Income

Haha - of course Microsoft will be happy to split Teams out of Office business packages. Then they can collect two separate licence fees and just say "the EU made us do it".

[Dan 55]

Re: More Income

The only thing Teams is bundled is the Microsoft 365 installer. As for the software packages themselves go, Teams and Office have completely different program directories and update methods. Office can be installed without Teams, and Teams can be installed on its own.

By design of course because MS knew this day would come. They're probably surprised they got away with it for so long.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The only thing Teams is bundled is the Microsoft 365 installer.

Errr.... Teams comes as part of Office for Mac and you aren't given a choice about which bits you want installed. (Home and Office Business V16.72)

Currently, I have

Excel,

OneNote

Outlook

PowerPoint

Teams

Word

I only use Word and Excel.

[Dan 55]

Re: The only thing Teams is bundled is the Microsoft 365 installer.

On Windows your local BOFH can use the Office Deployment Tool to choose to make Teams a part of the Office install or not. On a Mac you have to use a different install package without Teams.

Deploy Microsoft Teams with Microsoft 365 Apps

They're only bundled together by the Office installer, after installation Teams and Office are separate pieces of software.

[43300]

Re: The only thing Teams is bundled is the Microsoft 365 installer.

"after installation Teams and Office are separate pieces of software"

Sort of, but there are a lot of hooks - especially between Teams and Outlook. Do these use publicly-documented APIs?

[Strahd Ivarius]

Re: The only thing Teams is bundled is the Microsoft 365 installer.

Of course, and the document is stored in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”

[Jason Hindle]

Re: The only thing Teams is bundled is the Microsoft 365 installer.

“ I only use Word and Excel.”

Both available standalone from the Mac App Store. Install, fire up, sign in; job done. And the best part is this method makes them super easy to delete. I would never use the monolithic Office installer on the Mac.

[MachDiamond]

Re: The only thing Teams is bundled is the Microsoft 365 installer.

"Errr.... Teams comes as part of Office for Mac and you aren't given a choice about which bits you want installed. "

It was easy for me, I installed LibreOffice. It's not Word and Excel that are the issue, it's all of the shadow files that get installed with the M$ package that I find littered all over the place.

I've been using Igor Pro for large data spreadsheet datasets since Excel just chokes on them.

[Antron Argaiv]

Re: The only thing Teams is bundled is the Microsoft 365 installer.

Visio.

It's useful, if not optimal, but for some reason, it's not included in the default Office. You actually have to pay extra for a sketch tool? Yeah, I know there are alternatives, but compatibility forces me to use Visio, so someone else can modify my drawings.

[Alan W. Rateliff, II]

Re: More Income

The only thing Teams is bundled is the Microsoft 365 installer. As for the software packages themselves go, Teams and Office have completely different program directories and update methods. Office can be installed without Teams, and Teams can be installed on its own.

My experience is exactly the opposite, and I came here to post what the OP said. First, I find that I have to install Teams for Business separately from Office 365 Apps for Enterprise. Secondly, Teams functionality is included as part of our Office 365 for Business license (with an extra $8 or something if you want the user to allow dial-ins for the meetings.)

Now, get away from the forced Microsoft account logins for Windows 11 and later releases of Windows 10 -- that will make me happy. (I know the BypassNRO trick, but end users do not and it causes a good bit of havoc.)

[Richard 12]

Re: More Income

It's the licence, not the installer.

Teams is "free" with all tiers of Microsoft 356, thus all other messaging and communication applications have to compete with "free".

[43300]

Re: More Income

Quite - all that would happen would be that it would become a separate license with its own monthly subscription charge. The main Office license would of course not reduce in price to compensate. And it'll have a separate installer, but once installed will integrate with Office in exactly the same way,

Basically it's too late to take action on this - the time to tackle it was several years ago. If they try it now all that will happen is a "solution" which makes MS more money, and is as ineffective as 'Choose your browser'...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: More Income

Microsoft will offer 2 subscription models 0365 with teams for £x & O365 without teams for £x - 0.05 this won't be on the man page you'll have to navigate through 3 screens to get to it

[Dan 55]

Re: More Income

Mozilla said they did get a lot of downloads from the browser choice window and they lost 6-9 million downloads in a "glitch".

[ComputerSays_noAbsolutelyNo]

If you get a new computer with Win 10/11 bloat OS pre-installed, then the pre-installed Teams client is incompatible with a micros~365 business account.

So, you need to un-install Teams and then install (the other) Teams.

Thank you for nothing.

[katrinab]

You can have both, and use one on your personal account and the other on your work account. That I think is the idea, to keep work and personal communications separate. Of course, most people use WhatsApp for their personal communications.

[43300]

Has anyone on here ever come across anyone who uses the fake-Teams consumer chat thing which, like a tapeworm, has embedded itself into W11? I've come across literally nobody who ever uses it, and its sole function seems to be to confuse the hell out of users.

Our Intune config attacks it in several ways - I've found that this is the best approach to getting rid of baked in shiteware in Windows, as when one method of removing it mysteriously stops working, one of the others might still do the trick. Currently I have a 100% success rate in getting rid of fake-Teams from the work W11 machines, but I am of course fully aware that at any point MS could break the removal methods - "by accident".

[jake]

"Currently I have a 100% success rate in getting rid of fake-Teams from the work W11 machines"

Me, too. I reformat the things before they ever boot into Windows, and then install Slackware.

[sabroni]

re: I reformat the things before they ever boot into Windows, and then install Slackware.

Really?

I never would have guessed.

[Anonymous Coward]

why the fuck would you use whatsapp (whatstwat)

Unless you have a fetish for facebook screwing you over?

[Roland6]

Unbundle from Office, bundle with Windows...

MS bundling other MS products (including "starter" versions) with Windows such as Edge, Media Player, Office, Teams, OneDrive etc. really needs to be stamped on, given they have well over 50% share of the market.

[xyz]

Teams was bundled with 365!!!!

Blimey, I thought it was nailed on by a blind beagle.

[Wolfclaw]

Nothing but the basics should be bundled with OS, if you want to use a manufacturers toys, we have manufacturers stores to make install easy but this is not just a Microsoft issue, Apple, Google, Samsung, you name it, they are all anti-competitive !

[tango_uniform]

Will Slack go after Google Meet bundling into Google Workspace, once they've slayed the Teams dragon? (They may not have too, what with Google's penchant for killing off products...)

This just smells like sore loser BS to me. If the Slack-jaws fully competed in the office automation and collaboration space (like Google does) then they might have a point.

[katrinab]

How many communications apps has Google killed off now? I've lost track.

The last one I actually used was Google Hangouts. When they killed that off, I moved away from Google products.

[MachDiamond]

"Will Slack go after Google Meet bundling into Google Workspace"

They may not need to as using anything Google for business is an RPG aimed at both feet. Why do companies think it's a good move to commit their work products to a Google server using Google applications? It's not as if Google hasn't been scolded for reading people's private communications on a few occasions.

[veti]

Neither Office nor Teams is bundled with any OS, last I heard.

[Richard 12]

Other than Windows 11, where a version of it is bundled and preinstalled.

And the cloud-based desktop you can get from O360, where another version of it is bundled.

[Roland6]

Remember there are two scenarios: Windows download and shop brought system.

Every new system I’ve purchased for some years now has had some form of “trial” Office and 365 pre installed.

As for Teams, I’m uncertain whether the latest W10 image from Windows download includes Teams (personal) or not.

Hence I suggest the bundling is a little more subtle, hence MS can tick the “not bundled” with the OS box.

[43300]

I get our computers from Dell, and every one I've bought for years has come with an Office 'trial'. Even if I get this specifically removed from the quote, it makes absolutely no difference - still comes with it anyway. I just wipe them as soon as I get them out of the box.

[MachDiamond]

"I get our computers from Dell, and every one I've bought for years has come with an Office 'trial'. "

They are being paid to install those trial packages and also being charged a Window license for every computer they produce regardless of whether the purchaser wishes to reformat the drive and install linux instead.

[43300]

We do use Windows - if they'd provide a clean install I would use it, but they don't, and won't do even if requested!

[katrinab]

I wipe the entire drive as soon as I receive a new computer.

Microsoft's bundled bloatware is bad enough. Computer manufacturers add even more on top of that.

[43300]

"As for Teams, I’m uncertain whether the latest W10 image from Windows download includes Teams (personal) or not."

No, it doesn't - it only comes bundled in W11. Doesn't appear to be available in the Microsoft Store either - no doubt W10 users will really feel that they are missing out here...

[FirstTangoInParis]

“Nothing but the basics should be bundled with OS,”

Yes, but please think of the O365 admins who have to wade through endless pages of waffle (which only seem to work properly with Edge) and now they’ll be another effing admin tool to deal with Teams.

The O365 admin team should all be forced to spend a week on Google Admin Console and then write an essay on why M$ is so effing expensive because it needs teams of shiny shoe marketing types to write a vast amount of useless help pages about nothing in particular.

[43300]

I expect the Office online script generator tool will have an option to generate the installation XML, just as it does with Office.

[Anonymous Coward]

A separate licence for Teams would be a bad idea for the public sector

As a public sector CIO, unbundling Teams from M365 would be terrible idea - we have relied upon it since covid, essentially getting it for no additional charge, and shelling out an extra £100K+ for a Zoom licence or possible future separate Teams licence would have a real impact on what else we can do. Terrible idea.

[Roland6]

Re: A separate licence for Teams would be a bad idea for the public sector

>essentially getting it for no additional charge

That's why MS bundled it, it might be "free" but the price is that you are discouraged from using alternative and better non-MS solutions.

It is such thinking by the Government sector is why it got itself locked into the proprietary MS Office document formats for the last 30 plus years and then locked itself into Microsoft for G-Cloud...

Call yourself a public sector CIO...

[PM from Hell]

Re: A separate licence for Teams would be a bad idea for the public sector

I've worked with several organisations who have tried to move away from Office it's just been impossible. one organisation ended up licencing every desktop for Gsuite and Office. The simple fact of the matter is that if you run large Scale IT organisations supporting many thousands of users and hundreds of applications it is impossible to remove office without a disastrous effect on the end user experience. I'm a Project Manager working with a variety of organisations but the reliance on a minute by minute basis on the ability to extract data, produce letters, send emails etc from corporate apps is business critical, there is no other office which offers this level of integration reliably. it may work 90% of th time once you have worked with the 3rd party software provider to perform the integration but you'll be running a non-standard configuration and that will cause issues around application patching and upgrades. In the real world of Corporate IT most of us are implementing Commercial Off The Shelf software and for anything less than a multi billion pound a year turnover company I'm doing it with out of th ebox configurations and workflows restricting changes to 'personalisation' to fit the organisation standards. We do not have the resources for anything else, our developers are working full time on the 'niche' applications which are required to run a particular process peculiar o the organisation or plugging gaps in the COTS offering to allow better intra application integration.

At a personal level I've been working with Gsuite for 10 years and the spellcheck is still not good enough, I have mild dyslexia and lean heavily on the spell check tools, the quality of work I can produce is measurably lower on G Suite because of this and I have to rely on more colleague support for proof reading which i a real cost in terms of productivity. During COvid, the County COuncil I was working with had to move from having 3-400 remote workers to several thousands over a 2 week period, at the same time it was battling to realign service provision to our most vulnerable citizens to protect both them and our staff, we had to close day centres, change the way home care was delivered and deploy a couple of thousand laptops and PC's. Th IT team did a fantastic job supporting this initially, then developing a volunteering application to allow voluntary organisations to co-ordinate the pandemic response but the fact that we could hugely ramp up Teams usage by just increasing the size of the internet connectivity was an absolute life saver. I' a pragmatic user of microsoft services, dislike a lot about the companies practices but suggesting that adding additional costs to using Teams would increase competition in the corporate sector is just naive.

[katrinab]

Re: A separate licence for Teams would be a bad idea for the public sector

Certainly for sure I couldn't replace Excel with any of the other spreadsheet offerings out there. They are nowhere near feature parity with Excel.

[Orv]

Re: A separate licence for Teams would be a bad idea for the public sector

Show me someone who thinks there's an open source spreadsheet that's a drop-in replacement for Excel, and I'll show you someone who has never used a macro. ;)

[katrinab]

Re: A separate licence for Teams would be a bad idea for the public sector

Or things like spillable functions and links to external data.

[sten2012]

Re: A separate licence for Teams would be a bad idea for the public sector

Not open source obviously but Google sheets seems like the best one for external data and can do things without macros that excel can't.

Drop-in no, but open source is absolutely good enough for 95% and for the other 5% - how much of that is a spreadsheet the best answer in the first place? I usually see it being used more as database than anything else as a non-finance worker.

Problem in my opinion is it's such a general purpose workhorse and so often abused for things it shouldn't be that people get used to the functions of the one suite. So momentum of very specific features are more a draw for spreadsheets, and Microsoft win by default there. Not because the features they have are better as such. Just because it's so commonly used and others are different. A self fulfilling prophecy essentially.

[katrinab]

Re: A separate licence for Teams would be a bad idea for the public sector

To give one example:

On Excel, you can do =UNIQUE(column1_ref), and it will give you a list of the unique values in that column. That works in Google Sheets as well.

You can then do =SUMIF(column1_ref, D1#, column2_ref), where D1 is where you entered the formula above, then it will give you a sum of all the values in column2 that match each of the unique values in column1. That does not work in Google Sheets.

In this particular scenario, a Pivot Table would work in Google Sheets, but the spillable functions in Excel allow you to do things that aren't possible with Pivot Tables.

For example, I have a template in my library that calculates monthly loan interest charges for any loan given the loan amount, number of monthly payments, the amount of each payment, and the loan start date. I tried importing it into Google Sheets, and it doesn't work.

[43300]

Re: A separate licence for Teams would be a bad idea for the public sector

As well as the functionality within Excel, there's also the issue of plugins - many CRM / finance / HR / etc systems have plugins for Excel (and sometimes Word and Outlook too). Don't think I've ever come across any which have plugins for any alternaitve Office suites (they might exist, but if so will be pretty niche).

[Roland6]

Re: A separate licence for Teams would be a bad idea for the public sector

I wasn’t suggesting a move away from the traditional MS Office suite (Word, excel, PowerPoint), merely noting that thanks to government shortsightedness it has locked itself into MS Office. Specifically, the finger can be pointed at Thatcher, who removed the teeth from the CCTA in 1989, which (combined with similar market lassie-faire in the US) had the effect of killing GOSIP and knock on effects on the IT user industry lead MAP/TOP initiative. Whilst many will remember OSI (ie. Networking protocols), the bigger part of these initiatives was the Standardisation of file formats used in manufacturing and technical offices. Obviously, we can look back over 30plus years and see the impact of the thinking “ let the market decide” and absence of any leadership by government has had…

Obviously, there are many reason why MS have done well, one of them is that they have been good at selling: bundling the separate products Word, Excel and PowerPoint into a single office suite(1990) Then adding to this over the years (eg. Outlook added in 1995), with Teams being one of the latest additions to this bundle. So those that had MS365 subscriptions, Teams was sitting there waiting to be discovered… Plus if you look at the effort MS put in to getting MS cloud adopted as the UK governments cloud platform..

CoViD: Much of government went with Teams, yet third-sector organisations (mostly without IT departments) went with Zoom and cursed having to use Teams with NHS/local government… however, you are right Zoom and Teams were life savers for many organisations that within weeks went to highly distributed working. If it wasn’t for Zoom and Teams, I expect many would have gone with Jitsi.

Having Teams unbundled would actually be good for the public sector, as then they would have to define requirements and go through a public procurement, resulting in a contract. Currently, MS can do what it likes to Teams as it’s “free” and not part of the contract (suggest you look at Vodafone and the termination of the “free” bundled email services to Demon customers a few years back…)

As for enterprise systems integration (10,000 plus users), spent circa 30 years doing that, so not unappreciative of the challenges your organisation faces.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: A separate licence for Teams would be a bad idea for the public sector

you know that in civilized countries the public sector is barred from using MS products?

btw, you'll be happy to know that in the current M365 license plan E3, you not only have MS Office and Teams, but also Windows 11 and all the other products that will allow shadow IT to prosper in your organization, up to the moment you'll discover you have to fork more $$$ to keep your people working...

[localzuk]

Re: A separate licence for Teams would be a bad idea for the public sector

Can you give me 5 example countries that bar the public sector from using MS Office?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: A separate licence for Teams would be a bad idea for the public sector

sensible ones, that have goverment people who haven't been lobbied (really bribed! but for some reason they gave it a nicer name)

[Casca]

Re: A separate licence for Teams would be a bad idea for the public sector

So you know of no one...

[localzuk]

Re: A separate licence for Teams would be a bad idea for the public sector

So, no list then? Just conspiracy theories?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: A separate licence for Teams would be a bad idea for the public sector

I'm here for that list of five... I guess someone is off furiously researching their OP as I type.

German government departments have been trialling Linux for years IIRC, but seem to flip-flop between going all in and all out. Truth be told, it's more or less impossible - you might get 90% weaned off the MS teat, but then you hire a CFO who comes with all his macros written in Excel and simply refuses to use anything else or a PM who needs her and all her team to use Project or...

[43300]

Re: A separate licence for Teams would be a bad idea for the public sector

You can turn off the options in the MS licenses which you don't want available to the users (and I do!)

[hoola]

Re: A separate licence for Teams would be a bad idea for the public sector

"Shadow IT" is one of the huge causes of stuff breaking and security risks.

Been, there, seen the results where a small but vocal group screamed that they only way they could work was with an "unmanaged" PC. This was the one time that we ended up with ransomware, the source, through the unmanage PC.

The same with Apple devices, they were seen as a way of escaping corporate management, once we starting doing that the demand for them fell of a cliff, and unsurprisingly the support calls dropped.

The biggest risk to any corporate IT system is the "expert" user who believes they know better. Sadly that includes many very smart, people who should know better, often working in the IT function.

[jake]

Forgetting history ...

"First came Slack then others joined the scrum to tackle the Beast of Redmond"

Actually, first came BSD, and then some also-rans[0]. SLS (and a few other also-rans) came before Slack ... Then came Debian. The rest that came after were run by Management, who decided to follow the Beast's business model because it made money at the expense of removing some of the FOSS from FOSS. Those of us with a clue stuck with Slack. Or possibly Debian, until they sold out, and the clueful switched to Devuan.

Some of us have been battling the Beast (Ma Bell and the corporate world) since before Microsoft even existed.

[0] Coherent, Minix etc.

[hoola]

Re: Forgetting history ...

There is a huge difference between having Open Source, FOSS and commercially supported products.

This is what so many ignore in the endless comments on El-Reg that "Open Source" is the answer to everything.

Public sector and corporations require fully supported solutions where, if it goes wrong you are not just stuck with Google, itself a source of utter drivel when it comes to fixing stuff.

I am not saying that Microsoft (or Red Hat, Oracle, etc) support is good, just that when there are issues, managers can call their account managers and speak to people. There is a path of escalation.

[ecofeco]

So close!

If they would just stop Teams altogether, the world would be a better place.

[Androgynous Cow Herd]

My $.02

I use a Mac for work. Company supplied image, etc....but I can to some degree control what is actually on the system.

And I hate Teams, because if the client is installed, it will automatically add itself into the "Load at Login" group. Even if I specifically disable it, it will re-enable if I ever have to use the client.

So, it's uninstalled, rest of Office works without it, although Outlook used to try to add a Teams link to any calendar invites I sent until the client was uninstalled and I found the slightly hidden "Add Online Events to all meetings" setting.

Because of the stupid and aggressive "Load on Startup" behaviour that will not stay defeated (Unlike Zoom) My policy for vendor meetings is simple: If I get an invite for a Teams meeting, I will decline it and tell the other party that if they want to meet with me, they will use Zoom. If they cannot use anything but Teams because of "Company policy" - then they don't need my business.

[localzuk]

Re: My $.02

You know you don't have to use the client at all right? Teams works perfectly well via the web. So, meetings with others doesn't require loading the client app at all.

Same with Zoom, if the person running the meeting allows the option/has the right license.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: My $.02

Does it, though?

Last time I tried to use Teams via web it suggested (pushed) towards installing the client app. It wasn't clear how to proceed otherwise.

Now, I'm admittedly not a Microsoft Windows person, and I don't use Teams much, so maybe I missed something. I use a Linux laptop, and have tried this before -- with CentOS and Debian, so I've used both RPM and DEB Teams packages, and there was no practical difference in behavior I could see.

The bigger issue was the Teams client on my laptop simply couldn't connect to the remote Teams meeting. I chalked it up to some borkenness with the Linux Teams client, but talking on the phone with the other folks, I could almost hear them rolling their eyes in exasperation: "no, it happens all the time". They thought it's because I was not on their network or in their AD group or something. I have no idea.

[43300]

Re: My $.02

Teams mostly works via the browser but only in specific browsers - Edge (surprise, surprise) behaves best, and other Chromium browsers most of the time. I've had a lot of trouble with it in Firefox. Not tested on a Mac for ages so don't know what it's like in Safari these days.

It does try to push the installed version in all cases, though.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: My $.02

No, it doesn't. It complains about access to the camera, the microphone, the speaker. Access to these can be granted and yet it will still complain and then state you will have a much better experience with the FAT client. TEAMS sucks big donkey .....

[localzuk]

Re: My $.02

Weird, I use it all day every day, and have no issues with mic, camera etc... It asked me the first time I used it, I granted access and that's it. Worked fine from then on.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: My $.02

Teams works well enough on Windows. Sometimes not at all anywhere else.

Teams seems to want people to have the same Microsoft AD (Sharepoint?) membership. YMMV otherwise.

By contrast, Zoom mostly just works regardless of who or where you are, and what kind of computer you're using.

I don't love Zoom, but as long as we must have video meetings (in addition or instead of sending email, which would cover most of them) I'd rather use an application which isn't tied to a particular vendor's OS and a given customer's environment.

[BPontius]

Are we learning yet?

Microsoft just doesn't learn, anti trust, penalties, lawsuits...and they just keep repeating the same behavior. The more accurate wording would be doesn't care. At least not about the user.

[NATTtrash]

Re: Are we learning yet?

...because it is just more profitable to do so. That's what companies do, their prime directive is. Why are people surprised that other people are only thinking about their end-of-year bonus (and fuck you too)?

[DevOpsTimothyC]

Re: Are we learning yet?

The more accurate wording would be doesn't care that this is a cost of doing business

FTFY

[MachDiamond]

Re: Are we learning yet?

"Microsoft just doesn't learn, anti trust, penalties, lawsuits"

All of that doesn't cost them near as much as they make by being naughty. In the mean time, they stifle competition and are big enough to do that that people get used to the M$ product and M$ has had the chance to make sure the integration with so many of their other products is all worked out.

[Franco]

Re: Are we learning yet?

They'll never learn, or perhaps more accurately will never have to learn. If any Government really goes to town on Microsoft over antitrust, then they'll have to do the same to Google and Apple for the similar degrees of bundling in their mobiles operating systems. As much as all of us here are capable of choice, the average user isn't and doesn't want to, they want things to "just work" out of the box and that very user apathy is exactly how Chrome became so dominant - the average user wouldn't even notice a drive-by download never mind try to reverse it.

[localzuk]

SSO?

"the automatic login into OneDrive, Teams and other Microsoft 365 apps together with the Windows login."

That's something ALL software providers can offer. So, if they try and make the experience worse for everyone because they as developers are either too incompetent or too lazy to implement it properly themselves, then they'll not experience a good time in court.

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft are scared

Otherwise, why would they start talking about doing this? You don't offer concessions unless you think you're going to lose big. This isn't a software company trying to act responsibly, this is a pre-emptive plea bargain to reduce a punishment.

[Anonymous Coward]

This one goes to 11

Given that MS once said that Win10 would be the last ever version and would keep getting better - I assume Win11 was just a panic reaction to Covid & Zoom, which would explain why Teams is impossible to remove and the rest looks like a rushed attempt to get a new, different looking version of Windows out as quickly as possible.

If they unbundle Teams - why would anyone then want to use an inferior version of Windows?

[teknopaul]

That ship sailed

"Microsoft is offering to stop bundling web conferencing and messaging app Teams with Office software to stave off the threat of a full-blown antitrust investigation by European Union regulators"

Microsoft has already pushed a shitty almost unworkable Teams free at first, made it workable, and are _now_ will go to compete fairly.

Now is too late.

This was blatant anti trust they should be fined hard because it's easy to work out how much market share they stole.

[sketharaman]

Free or not free?

Does it mean customers of Office will need to pay for Teams separately or that they'll still get it free but only need to install it separately?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Free or not free?

I would have thought they would keep at least a basic version free to compete with Zoom etc. but who knows - tech companies do seem to be good at using any change as an opportunity to increase license fees somehow - and people keep paying them!

[Anonymous Coward]

Asking to manage my PC

A nice change would be to remove the automatically selected "allow my organization to manage my pc" BS when opening up the FAT client of MS Teams. My system is not a member of an AD domain for a reason... why on earth would I want it managed by the organization? If this was a managed PC then that would make sense but then the option still wouldn't because the user would not be presented with the option on a "managed system". Just more MS capture BS...

[43300]

Re: Asking to manage my PC

Indeed, that is pointless and fucking annoying! Has to be de-selected every time you sign in too, which might be more than once in a blue moon if you have MFA set up to demand authentication at specified intervals.

[DevOpsTimothyC]

Anti-trust not needed

Why is everyone jumping to a full anti-trust investigation when this can be easily dealt with by a small fine of 25% of the licencing costs charged by Microsoft to clients with any EU presence while teams was bundled with Office.

After all Microsoft have repeatedly shown they consider this sort of bundling a cost of doing business so why not put it into cost of terms that would make doing that sort of business too costly.

It would be even better if the EU enacted laws that ratcheted fines for repeat offenders