Same with Chrome, you can go without it but you will need to dismiss hundreds of nagboxes on Google sites.
A phone is $100 (or $1000) and an app is $1.
Or to take it from the perspective of the device OEM, the price isn't the money, it's having to agree to take the apps and services the customers might prefer alternatives to as a bundle with the services the customers demand you include with your product. Which has market value in the same way as paying for the default search engine does, and could have reduced the price of the device for the end user. Or increased competition for those services (like Google Play) that currently operate with high margins.
But that doesn't make the interaction anti-competitive; it makes them a nice product. It wouldn't make sense for MS to allow, say, other clients to MS Word to interact with their cloud, that would be anti-competitive in that they're actively shooting themselves in the foot while doing it. I don't see why this is a bad thing.
And in general, the fact that we're even converging from multiple services towards one is purely historical. The reason MS word & excel are two separate programs rather than one is due to the tech landscape on the past. Google Docs or Notion or Coda are all supersets ot Word vs Excel, using newer tech & hardware to provide a more unified experience, which IS in the interest of the user.
The tying together is tying together because you can sensibly separate them and the customer might like to use Microsoft Word with Google Drive or LibreOffice with OneDrive.
> It wouldn't make sense for MS to allow, say, other clients to MS Word to interact with their cloud, that would be anti-competitive in that they're actively shooting themselves in the foot while doing it.
It would be anti-competitive in that it would make it easier to compete with them?
> Google Docs or Notion or Coda are all supersets ot Word vs Excel, using newer tech & hardware to provide a more unified experience, which IS in the interest of the user.
The problem with the "unified experience" argument is that it only justifies putting them together, not inhibiting the customer from separating them. If the "unified experience" is actually in the interest of the customer then they'll choose it even when the alternative is available.
They might like to, but those options are just not available in the market, and that's not an anti-trust issue. I might like to have a Tesla with Apple Car play. I might like to have Ford Ranger with an engine made by Toyota. But these companies are under no obligation to satisfy my desires. I am free to make those combinations happen at great inconvenience to myself, but those companies are in no way expected to help me do that.
