EU antitrust team closer to full-blown Microsoft probe, say sources European Union antitrust regulators are edging closer to launching a full-blown probe into Microsoft's bundling of products with Office 365 amid failing efforts by the vendor to deter an official investigation. This is according to Reuters, which spoke to various loquacious sources said to be familiar with the inner dealings …
“We persist in our collaborative endeavor with the esteemed Commission, traversing the depths of its investigation in unison. Ever receptive to pragmatic resolutions that aptly attend to its concerns and ardently cater to the flourishing of our cherished customers.”
“In this harmonious accord, we tread the path of reason, intertwining the essence of Microsoft's noble quest with the wisdom of old. May our united efforts forge a tapestry of innovation, where the needs of patrons are honored, and the realms of possibility are boundless. Together, we shall script a tale of synergy, echoing across the ages, weaving the legacy of valor and ingenuity."
Was reminded of this last week when I tried to change from Microsoft Edge to Google Chrome as the default browser.
A very stubborn Windows 11 required several attempts to finally make the change.
Integration is great - but let the building blocks be 'open' - please...
I can point to the default file opening routines from e.g. MS teams; that whether in Program Manager you have told it to use application of choice, that it will (attempt) to open in Edge anyway.
Latest one I've noticed is the change of Yammer to "Viva Engage". The latter no longer opens in Chrome; which can only be a deliberate tactic given the similarities of code base from Chrome to Edge. Yet another anticompetitive move.
No shortage of other examples available, right back to the earliest days of when MS had to fight to try and steal market share from the incumbents of the day.
the number of times I need to move it back to foxit is crazy. Each update Edge is suddenly opening PDFs. You get the little balloon "sorry, some of your default settings have reset to Edge" and you just know what has happened. I dont mind edge as a browser but I do mind the hijacking.
The true cost to enterprises of the bundling of Teams is 1kb text files in chat taking a minute to load, functionality breaking every fortnight as they silently deploy poorly tested updates, a terrible experience when migrating Tenants (complete loss of past text conversations) and overall a less reliable experience than their competitors
In my experience slack has been far better than Teams.
Calls (Huddles) work fine - and it's usefully integrated into various ticketing systems etc that make my life easier.
Probably helps that this machine isn't running an OS by a company that wants to kill slack and force everyone to teams... or am I being a touch too cynical?
Rossmann (in his latest Zoom-sponsored snarl) recommends some “freeware” app called “Jitsi.”
https://youtu.be/Nzt0tzsaWDE
It used to be that an operating system served a useful purpose by abstracting the computer’s physical resources to facilitate application development. But now you can do anything on the browser itself, within html5.
Windows, Mac, Linux: they are all obsolete. They are all VMs in my Proxmox hypervisor!
“Windows, Mac, Linux: they are all obsolete”
Try running a network analyser in your browser. Or a compiler. Or a file browser, or a command line, or a VPN, or a JTAG probe, or a neural network, or….
I’m sure you’ll get somewhere (for a very limited definition of “somewhere”) with some of this (like an editor) but basically (and I mean this with all due respect) you’re talking twaddle.
Questioning the aggressive tactics of targetting people that bought and paid for perpetual licenses of e.g. Office 2010 seem fair game too.
Or the spyware baked in by design that tries to learn your companies acronyms - and then when you re-use them it might even suggest it at a spell check or similar. Such behaviour is not without it's uses; however, by definition it means that something Microsoft is scanning the content of your documents and sending it somewhere.
Creates problems for GDPR, that does. To say nothing of insider information. All microsoft has to do is Select * from [user accounts] matching user profile [Exec], or soimething to that effect.
I still find it amazing that the PiHole at home blocks tonnes of MS traffic even from a heavily customised enterprise win 10 install.
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