Feels a bit like your forgetting Skype for business and lync already existed. I kinda agree with your point but I also feel it’s unfair on Microsoft, they are giving their customers more services for the same price, and the customers are using the services… I’m not sure the customer really loses out if ms are saving them another subscription + integration cost.
> I’m not sure the customer really loses out if ms are saving them another subscription + integration cost.
Not only the customer will pay the price 10 fold down the line, the entire industry/ecosystem will suffer after Microsoft effectively kill every alternative product.
They're not doing the customers a favor. It's a business 101 tactic to dominate the market. In the end, the customer will be abused and strangled with no other option to turn to.
Is it not a case the market will fix - if Microsoft increases costs in an attempt to strangle the customer, the higher prices create an opportunity for new players?
Right, the EC is desperate to get that fraction of a percent of its budget from that pure, innocent, freedom-loving American company. Makes complete sense…
What is actually happening is that the American government is dysfunctional and can’t be arsed to do its job.
The fines the eu want are percentages of global revenue, so will be significant sums of money. Maybe they are not so bothered about the money but want to disadvantage the us corperations.
For me the US has largely got it right and EU wrong. You can see this in the number of EU based tech giants. Would the EU be bringing these laws if Apple / google were European?
Welcome back, I missed the fearmongering you were so well-known for back when the EU Commission announced their investigation. You're probably someone with a sizable 401k or Roth IRA, I'm guessing?
Ah, yes, poor choice of words on my part. They are in iCloud Keychain (I think this is required?). But if you only have one device it's basically the same thing, or if you're trying to leave the ecosystem.
Are they not private keys that shouldn't be synced across devices? I thought icloud facilitated automatic creation of passkeys for each device, not actually sharing the same passkey across devices?
That's the crux of one of the debates... members of the FIDO Consortium threatening KeePassXC and other open source tools with blocking for sharing "roaming keys", meanwhile "Oh, Apple wants to share keys via AirDrop? No problem", which is one of the concerns, that it's yet another "push users to Apple and Google's tool of choice".
It will be down to policy not actual lack of data on infrastructure.
It's absolutely about the lack of data about historical infrastructure. LA's Regional Connector line was delayed for years, and the budget ballooned by over a billion dollars, due to the discovery of thousands of undocumented utility lines (still in use) along the route. This necessitated dramatic changes to the project timeline and scope, since the construction authority had to reroute all of those utility lines.
It’s a difficult balance, what would stop someone like Facebook requiring you to install their AppStore with all the tracking that could entail to access some key software like WhatsApp…
I am generally onboard with none native AppStore’s provided the platform vendors are able to have sensible defaults that will not confuse or limit what none technical people can do (basically iPhones should ship as they are but users can add none native AppStore’s by jumping through some fairly trivial hoops..)
The bit where it falls down for me is where does it end, if Apple / google are forced to open up their platforms so epic etc can have their own app stores, are Epic etc forced to open up their platforms (the Fortnite store for instance) so others parties can open their own stores within the game?
That would be amazingly ironic if Epic, in its quest to free Apple's App Store, wound up with a court decision that destroyed any profitability of its own...
