Microsoft broke the European Union's antitrust regulations by "tying" collaboration tool Teams to its dominant online Office productivity suite, according to preliminary findings from an investigation begun in July 2023....
They used it to give away Teams to existing customers then force through price rises later by adding functionality behind additional licenses. They also leveraged Teams to sell a significant amount of conference room equipment that was running Skype Teams. Its likely Microsoft will start to use the embedded Teams usage to push up prices of their core M365 licenses, E3 and E5.
Its also heavily tied into Entra, Exchange, and SharePoint Online as its really three raccoons in a trench coat so its hard to fully use Teams without using those products, which must also be licensed, usually via a E3 or E5.
The timing of it being coincidentally when COVID hit meant everyone wanted a chat and meeting product, so good fortune paid a part as well. Also a lot of organizations wanted off Skype right around this period, so really fortunate timing.
We're last minute people, maybe a week in advance without air travel, a month with. A family friend just invited us to join them on a vacation NOVEMBER 2025. That seems bonkers to me!...
So big vacations we typically plan two to three years in advance and book as soon as the booking opens for the parts of that holiday. Usually means flights about 12 months before, accommodation usually a bit before then. Something like Disney or a sailing holiday we can book two years in advance as an entire package, which in the EU means we ATOL protected, far safer that far out than booking separate. I have terrible anxiety when booking lots of individual components like a backpacking holiday in Japan that had us staying in half a dozen hotels/apartments, hiring a couple of cars, getting internal flights, prebooking tickets to Sumo and Ghibli and so on, but its essential to get the best prices.
We are still paying for a family holiday in a cottage or villa as our kids are still starting their careers. This I book a year in advance, but we plan the locations far in advance of that and scope out where we want to stay.
As we work from home we can work from our van a fair bit. Earlier in the year we did a tour of wales over three weeks while working part time, later this year we are doing a three week tour of Cornwall/Devon/Somerset. We also get away a few long weekends around the bank holidays. As we stay at adult only sites that are very popular and will sell out quickly around the dates we want to go, these are booked as soon as booking opens for them, usually October the year before.
Booking early gets us far better pricing and we get to go where we want, stay where we want. Plus the planning and research is a big part of the enjoyment for us, its also essential if you want to make the most of a planning heavy holiday like Japan or Disney and not pay through the nose to use a quality planning service.
Ashley wants two main things out of his purchases, the brand name to slap on a web store with any head start it can give into running a business in that sector, and the retail space. Any decent retail space he wants to flip into residential property while stripping any fixtures and fittings of any value, anything else will be gone or rebooted into the lowest common denominator for that area.
Pretty sure he pays cash or close to it rather than a traditional leveraged buy out. He normally only buys struggling or collapsed brands he can get cheap like Wiggle.
Lots of their drive thrus use a person to take the order, and at a busy drive thru this becomes a dedicated person or persons just to take orders. If they can flip it to AI then they could open more lanes and reduce staff. Problem is that a skilled person is going to be better than AI over a shitty audio system, look at how Alexa and Siri struggle even when they have an optimized reception setup than the crappy setup you have at a drive thru with the person sitting inside their car, with music on and so on.
Musk banning Apple devices with how popular iPhones are to use twitter would hurt Musk more than it would hurt either Apple or OpenAI so it just sounds like a win win.
EU accuses Microsoft of antitrust violations for bundling Teams with O365 ( www.theregister.com )
Microsoft broke the European Union's antitrust regulations by "tying" collaboration tool Teams to its dominant online Office productivity suite, according to preliminary findings from an investigation begun in July 2023....
How far in advance do you usually plan vacations?
We're last minute people, maybe a week in advance without air travel, a month with. A family friend just invited us to join them on a vacation NOVEMBER 2025. That seems bonkers to me!...
UK Retailer GAME To End All In-Store Video Game Sales ( www.gfinityesports.com )
McDonald’s will stop testing AI to take drive-thru orders, for now ( www.theverge.com )
Elon Musk threatens to ban Apple devices from his companies over OpenAI partnership ( www.cnbc.com )
Hyperloop in 2023: Where Are They Now? ( www.youtube.com )