back to article Microsoft tells partners unbundling Teams is a 'compromise' with the EU

Microsoft has told its partner community that unbundling Teams from its Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites was a compromise – an alteration to the language it used when announcing the change. Microsoft decided to unbundle its comms client after the European Commission launched an investigation into whether bundling Teams with …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Terminator

    A little homily comparing two basketball players?

    A more apt analogy would be where one team owns the basketball hoop and gets to resite it in mid game ;)

    1. Sir Sham Cad

      Re: A little homily comparing two basketball players?

      Since I can never let a good metaphor go un-tortured, I would suggest one player owns the court and gets to place their hoop anywhere they like and only they can score points in their hoop and the other player needs to sneak their hoop in if they can at all.

      Still, I cannot find it in me to have any sympathy with Zoom

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: A little homily comparing two basketball players?

        Personally, I like Zoom for video conferencing but I may go off it if they make the more recent add-ins too obtrusive. To me, Teams is fine for an MS/Windows-centric business, where multiple forms of communication link together (especially for those whose work revolves around their computer); however, it's usability drops several notches if all you want is the video-conferencing part. Zoom manages to integrate all the necessary elements for a videoconference (or presentation or discussion) within one app and also no need to register, and works on almost any computing device (even audio only via a phone). The bundling in of ongoing chat, messaging, etc risks over-ambition and losing what is gained it its current position. Yes, it might take business from Teams and Slack, but I suspect the cost will be more than is worthwhile.

        However, I accept that Zoom isn't universally liked (and can understand why is some quarters).

        1. veti Silver badge

          Re: A little homily comparing two basketball players?

          Zoom wants - not unreasonably - to make money.

          Unfortunately, the only way anyone has yet figured out to make money in the software platform space is to enshittify their product.

          Sooner or later, either Zoom will fail and become bankrupt, or it will succeed, in which case it will slowly become unusable. There's really no middle ground.

          1. Stuart Castle Silver badge

            Re: A little homily comparing two basketball players?

            I think part of the problem is that we've become used to receiving certain services "free". I put "free" in quotes because these products and services are not free. Sure, you don't pay in money times, but they likely do collect and sell data they gather from you.

            Sadly, the old model of buying access to services like Zoom or facebook isn't likely to work. People have got used to having these services free, so they'd need to add features that add real value for a purchaser, and even then, it will likely be a subscription and not a one off purchase.

    2. CowHorseFrog Silver badge

      Re: A little homily comparing two basketball players?

      most of the world doesnt play basketball so a bad choice.

  2. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "The Register was able to download from Microsoft without entering channel partner credentials"

    Hmm. Doesn't that mean that you are guilty of terrorist hacking and computer abuse in the eye of the Home Office ?

    Couldn't you get fined for that ?

    I mean, people are apparently under risk of arrest for having accessed data that was publicly available, even if posted by mistake by some fat-fingered bobbie with a donut in his hand and another one in his mouth, so where does that put you ?

    1. Sir Sham Cad

      Re: "The Register was able to download from Microsoft without entering channel partner credentials"

      I would suspect there's some sort of Journalistic exception unless our current Home Orifice lot have binned it off.

    2. OhForF' Silver badge
      Joke

      Re: "The Register was able to download from Microsoft without entering channel partner credentials"

      Considering making teams (or zoom) available to victims users an act of terrorism is a viewpoint i can understand but i don't think you can get any court to agree.

  3. elsergiovolador Silver badge

    Next step

    Now "uncompute" Teams, so it no longer works on computers (shouldn't be a problem as it is already barely working).

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Next step

      Useless comment by a spoiled child who hates that Microsoft is on top. Grow up, the product works fine.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Difference w/o distinction

    I happen to work at a place that uses Teams for all company meetings but has to also use Zoom because a lot of our customers use it. I can't say one is heads and shoulders above the other. They both have different annoyances which it's puzzling have not been fixed since both companies offer free versions of the other company's product that the respective development teams should be checking out, and so could see where the competition did it better. My big bugaboo with Teams is the inability to set the camara parameters (like backgrounds) while in the device settings (as opposed to having to be about to enter or already in a meeting). But unless the price of Office w/o Teams is enough to cover the cost of Zoom, Micro$oft will always be open to charges of anticompetitive behavior due to Zooms pricing structure.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Difference w/o distinction

      I disagree. I have to use Teams, Meet and Zoom almost every day (with the occasional WebEx session thrown in), and yes, all video conferencing tools have issues. However Teams is really taking the cake for its moronic UX, the non-working search function, but most of all for the constant stream of annoying bugs which prevent users from making calls, joining meetings, getting notifications, sporadic disconnects, sound distortions, crashed video feeds other crap. All while consuming excessive CPU resources like there's no tomorrow.

      Which isn't all that surprising, considering that Teams started as shitty Electron app, and now that Microsoft realized that this mess is unfixable it's moved over to EdgeView2 to essentially become a PWA. Which is like going from from Black Death to Cholera.

      Zoom isn't perfect (and neither is Meet) but both do what it says in the tin, and both are exponentially more reliable than Teams.

      1. Kristian Walsh

        Re: Difference w/o distinction

        Sorry, but my experience is that Google Meet is a ball of shit, and any medium sized call will involve at least one participant having to reboot and/or change browsers or machine.

        Challenging for shitness is Slack with it’s two minute ritual of “can you hear me? I can hear you. Hold on, now can you hear me... hang on, I’ll quit Slack” once a day for every contact.

        Zoom does one thing, and does it pretty well. But in general, I can’t help thinking that outside of social use, video group calls are a bigger time-waste than in-person meetings: nobody is paying attention, but they still have to be present enough that they can’t to productive work. At least when everyone’s in the room, there are lots of non-verbal signals that it’s time to do something useful, but on a video call, the most senior waffler can string it out for ages.

  5. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Yuan also told the conference that Zoom has spent the last few years building video collaboration, phone, team chat, whiteboard, meeting scheduling, email, and calendar functionality into its client.

    Isn't this the bloke who said that despite all that staff had to be in the office?

  6. lozhurst

    Still bundled with Windows though?

    Unbundled from [MO]365 but presumably they’re still shipping the “home” version bundled into Windows. Having a home version that doesn’t work with the enterprise one is very confusing, made worse by the former being preinstalled on Windows 11 (“I don’t need to install Teams, I already have it.”).

    Last few Windows updates have reverted the “don’t start of boot” setting on my desktop on the home version too, which is annoying.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If teams didn't interfere completely with the operation of other applications that would be nice.

    Have you noticed how borked Excel becomes if you are in a teams call? Mouse pointer offsets by an inch, indeterminate scroll lock behaviour amongst other bugs.

    Unpicking the links between the two is probably a good thing given the borkage.

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