> I have little doubt that if Lina Khan was still heading up the US Federal Trade Commission that this is something she’d be looking into; it’s such a clear example of the abuses she used to take on. But now that a Trump crony is in that position instead, tech companies can get away with ripping off and lying to their customers, as Microsoft just did to me and millions of others.
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> Microsoft got off comparatively easy in recent years, as regulators and competition authorities went after the other major tech giants with much more vigor.
I have so many things to complain about with Microsoft, especially the enshitification of Windows, but I think the way they handled the Microsoft 365 plan change was actually transparent. I got an email telling me the price was going to go up a month before my plan was going to renew, and I logged into my account and saw the option to downgrade back to the tier I was originally on. It's a hassle, but it's a one-time thing. Of course it's still not cool of them to opt-in people to a more expensive tier.
I'm glad I semi-read this article, because it alerted me to the fact I could switch my Office plan back to the old AI-free plan that costs ~30% less. Nice. (I'm a big user of several LLM products, but the AI features in Office are completely useless to me, basically just an annoyance.)
Same here! I did cancel my subscription. I hadn't used it much aside from Outlook anyway. I probably wouldn't have cared about it if there hadn't been a price increase. Its now Thunderbird and LibreOffice.
This article inspired me to check if Google has something similar for Google Workspace, which also just increased its price due to a bunch of Gemini integration I have absolutely no need for.
As it turns out, they do—but it's hidden from the "Plans and Upgrade" page, which only shows the Standard plan and above. After some digging, I finally found an inconspicuous dropdown on my plan's billing page that had an option to downgrade my plan. Upon clicking it, I was taken back to the earlier "Plans and Upgrade" page, but this time, the Starter plan was made visible on the page.
It's exactly half the price of the Standard plan, just with less storage, no Gemini, and some restrictions on other enterprise features I've never even heard of. Pretty bizarre and upsetting that they completely hide the existence of the Starter plan like that.
I'm hoping I can eventually bring my reliance on Google services down to zero, whenever I can afford the effort it takes to migrate to something better.
"Generative AI is nothing but a con dressed up in big promises that become harder to believe with every passing month." - hard to read any blog post with an opening line this dismissive.
Well I am pretty sure Classic option will go away at some point.
But paying to write documents on your laptop ? No thanks, I will use LibreOffice* instead.
* In reality I use calligra that comes with Slackware instead of LibreOffice. I really never use office applications. So calligra is good enough for me.
FWIW, I "had it with Microsoft" before Windows 95 came out.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 37.8 ms ] threadNext paragraph:
> Microsoft got off comparatively easy in recent years, as regulators and competition authorities went after the other major tech giants with much more vigor.
Aka it's Microsoft, this is what they do.
For progress, one word: Document. For more, quit forcing on me stuff that hurts my work. One more, for a list of old problems, document and fix those.
As it turns out, they do—but it's hidden from the "Plans and Upgrade" page, which only shows the Standard plan and above. After some digging, I finally found an inconspicuous dropdown on my plan's billing page that had an option to downgrade my plan. Upon clicking it, I was taken back to the earlier "Plans and Upgrade" page, but this time, the Starter plan was made visible on the page.
It's exactly half the price of the Standard plan, just with less storage, no Gemini, and some restrictions on other enterprise features I've never even heard of. Pretty bizarre and upsetting that they completely hide the existence of the Starter plan like that.
I'm hoping I can eventually bring my reliance on Google services down to zero, whenever I can afford the effort it takes to migrate to something better.
But paying to write documents on your laptop ? No thanks, I will use LibreOffice* instead.
* In reality I use calligra that comes with Slackware instead of LibreOffice. I really never use office applications. So calligra is good enough for me.
FWIW, I "had it with Microsoft" before Windows 95 came out.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaster_%28computer_worm%29