Slack wanted to stay independent, but was unable to compete with tech giants(fastcompany.com)
fastcompany.com
Slack wanted to stay independent, but was unable to compete with tech giants
https://www.fastcompany.com/90584382/slack-salesforce-antitrust
262 comments
Screen hero was innovative and it looks like the control aspect of things got abandoned
I'm still mad about this. It was such a great piece of software, and then Slack bought it and literally killed it without offering anything to replace the lost functionality.
I'm still mad about this. It was such a great piece of software, and then Slack bought it and literally killed it without offering anything to replace the lost functionality.
This is one of the small number of takeovers (along with Sparrow and Dark Sky) that actually make me angry, because they deprived everyone of something really great, for little apparent benefit.
The fact that so many people use Slack, but then do all their voice, video and screensharing in Zoom or some other tool says a lot about Slack as a tool and company.
My wife uses Teams for work. It's rubbish in many ways, but when she's using it they do everything in it. Somehow slack has failed at this despite having many of the same features built in.
The fact that so many people use Slack, but then do all their voice, video and screensharing in Zoom or some other tool says a lot about Slack as a tool and company.
My wife uses Teams for work. It's rubbish in many ways, but when she's using it they do everything in it. Somehow slack has failed at this despite having many of the same features built in.
Why do you say Teams is rubbish? We used it for the better part of a year before moving to Slack (corporation wide mandate). So far my opinion of Slack is that it is rubbish. I never had any issues with Teams, but Slack has been a nightmare for me. I don’t get updates and notifications about channels I’m following like I should. It doesn’t work anywhere near as well on my phone as Teams did. I’m not a MS lover (I was a web developer during the first two browser wars and the standards war and still have bad feelings towards MS), but Teams seems to be really well put together. I’m interested to hear why you disagree.
Do you use teams a lot?
I’m literally astonished to read this.
Teams is the king of “press a key and wait for the screen to unfreeze”, or the “launched but all you get is a white box until you restart”.
It also features what I politely refer to as “no search”, which is where you search your chat history, and conversations just aren’t there... until you go back through your history and find them, and then wow! Suddenly you can search for it.
Screen sharing can cause a meeting to drop out for no reason.
Want to upload a video? Or an image? Well, you can get an empty white box and when you click on it, you’ll get an empty white pop up. Great job.
Now, all of that said... that’s on windows.
Now try using it on a Mac. Ha! Haaaaaa!
Usable? Yes.
Good?? Not in my books.
It’s one of the poorest chat applications I’ve used, personally. /shrug
To be fair, I haven’t had much trouble with the mobile app on iOS, but I don’t use it much, and it’s seems on-par to the slack one to me.
...but I certainly wouldn’t call it a marvel of engineering; it’s just deeply integrated with outlook and it’s mandatory; so people who don’t do “chat” also use it.
I’m literally astonished to read this.
Teams is the king of “press a key and wait for the screen to unfreeze”, or the “launched but all you get is a white box until you restart”.
It also features what I politely refer to as “no search”, which is where you search your chat history, and conversations just aren’t there... until you go back through your history and find them, and then wow! Suddenly you can search for it.
Screen sharing can cause a meeting to drop out for no reason.
Want to upload a video? Or an image? Well, you can get an empty white box and when you click on it, you’ll get an empty white pop up. Great job.
Now, all of that said... that’s on windows.
Now try using it on a Mac. Ha! Haaaaaa!
Usable? Yes.
Good?? Not in my books.
It’s one of the poorest chat applications I’ve used, personally. /shrug
To be fair, I haven’t had much trouble with the mobile app on iOS, but I don’t use it much, and it’s seems on-par to the slack one to me.
...but I certainly wouldn’t call it a marvel of engineering; it’s just deeply integrated with outlook and it’s mandatory; so people who don’t do “chat” also use it.
Yes, I used it constantly day in and day out on a mac for years. I honestly never experienced the things you mention. But I do have a high end mac, so maybe that has something to do with it?
Everyone who uses it in our office on all platforms experiences these issues to a greater or lesser extent, depending how much they use it.
I guess you’re just lucky? Or we’re unlucky?
...but we have about 900 staff using it, so it seems like a strange outlier to me.
I’m absolutely astonished to hear that you don’t get the “missing image” bug; that one happens all the time with larger images you share. It literally happened to me yesterday morning.
Maybe it a regional thing, and the Australian infrastructure is just rubbish behind the scenes and we’re seeing latency issues?
No idea; also don’t really care that much; teams gets my thumbs down. It’s rubbish as far as I’m concerned; hopefully others have better experiences with it.
I guess you’re just lucky? Or we’re unlucky?
...but we have about 900 staff using it, so it seems like a strange outlier to me.
I’m absolutely astonished to hear that you don’t get the “missing image” bug; that one happens all the time with larger images you share. It literally happened to me yesterday morning.
Maybe it a regional thing, and the Australian infrastructure is just rubbish behind the scenes and we’re seeing latency issues?
No idea; also don’t really care that much; teams gets my thumbs down. It’s rubbish as far as I’m concerned; hopefully others have better experiences with it.
Use Teams for Video conference. It is a life saver.
Never faced issues on the things that you mention - screen sharing, uploading of a video or image etc.
Perf no issues, conduct internal as well as external conferences with college hires and interns (session attendance can go up to 70-80 people).
Yes there are some usability issues - the most notorious among my colleagues being the very clumsy meeting link share.
Never faced issues on the things that you mention - screen sharing, uploading of a video or image etc.
Perf no issues, conduct internal as well as external conferences with college hires and interns (session attendance can go up to 70-80 people).
Yes there are some usability issues - the most notorious among my colleagues being the very clumsy meeting link share.
Used it for a few years, and heavily this year with several daily screen sharing sessions, calls, meetings, ad-hoc group calls, both internally and with external contacts since Covid-19 hit the streets in March, and I've never experienced any of what you mention.
Never heard any issues from my colleagues either, including the less technically minded at sales which usually come running if something doesn't work.
While I think it has room for improvement, for basic stuff it just works for us.
Never heard any issues from my colleagues either, including the less technically minded at sales which usually come running if something doesn't work.
While I think it has room for improvement, for basic stuff it just works for us.
Just like parent stating "usable? yes", I too find it usable at best. Coming from a history of using Discord and Slack, where Discord was mostly "less formal Slack without all the utilities, but with voice chat", I find Teams to fall into an uncanny valley.
The focus on video conferences might be the most annoying part. Most of the time, I just want to see the shared screen at best. There's an option to stop incoming video, though this one isn't on by default. There also flat-out isn't a way to stop looking at your own face when sharing video.
Meetings with Teams links tend to inflate the history, dozens of chats that could've been one thing now cause dumb questions like "should we stay here or go into the other call?". This was already solved by apps like Teamspeak more than a decade ago. It feels immensely clunky, but the culture also doesn't provide an intuitive way to avoid this problem.
The last bit highlights my biggest problem. It's mostly culture. It feels as restrictive as your average enterprise program, yet it also feels chaotic in all the wrong ways. Many problems have already been solved and plenty of cultures, like global social gaming, have already experienced ways to handle this. Had I not had any experience with other apps, I likely wouldn't feel this way.
I also realize part of the problem is how Teams is configured, which I have no experience with. But then it once again boils down to "here you have this tool that can do a lot, but it's not intuitive and we don't give you a lot of guidelines" despite the fact most companies have zero experience with remote.
The focus on video conferences might be the most annoying part. Most of the time, I just want to see the shared screen at best. There's an option to stop incoming video, though this one isn't on by default. There also flat-out isn't a way to stop looking at your own face when sharing video.
Meetings with Teams links tend to inflate the history, dozens of chats that could've been one thing now cause dumb questions like "should we stay here or go into the other call?". This was already solved by apps like Teamspeak more than a decade ago. It feels immensely clunky, but the culture also doesn't provide an intuitive way to avoid this problem.
The last bit highlights my biggest problem. It's mostly culture. It feels as restrictive as your average enterprise program, yet it also feels chaotic in all the wrong ways. Many problems have already been solved and plenty of cultures, like global social gaming, have already experienced ways to handle this. Had I not had any experience with other apps, I likely wouldn't feel this way.
I also realize part of the problem is how Teams is configured, which I have no experience with. But then it once again boils down to "here you have this tool that can do a lot, but it's not intuitive and we don't give you a lot of guidelines" despite the fact most companies have zero experience with remote.
This is strange. Our company uses Teams and I have never experienced any of those problems in 2 years.
The only problems I have had with Teams is the robotic-voice quality and the strange fascination that Microsoft has in changing their UI's from update to update leading me to keep hunting for that button which was there previously but can't be found now since its moved to some other place.
The only problems I have had with Teams is the robotic-voice quality and the strange fascination that Microsoft has in changing their UI's from update to update leading me to keep hunting for that button which was there previously but can't be found now since its moved to some other place.
Not the parent, but it's far too easy for your IT department to totally fuck teams up.
Our Teams instance has the calendar disables making it a pain to join meetings if you don't have easy access to your outlook calendar. They've also disabled any sort of api access which really limits what can be done in terms of integrating it into our other workflows.
In terms of general usability the app is lacking in information density. I routinely miss messages in team channels I've collapsed.
Our Teams instance has the calendar disables making it a pain to join meetings if you don't have easy access to your outlook calendar. They've also disabled any sort of api access which really limits what can be done in terms of integrating it into our other workflows.
In terms of general usability the app is lacking in information density. I routinely miss messages in team channels I've collapsed.
Huh, I have the opposite problem with Slack. I’m constantly missing messages on Slack, but I never did on Teams.
Same thing happened to me. Missing a LOT of messages. No notifications at all and it's really frustrating.
Teams doesn’t even have the ability to reply-quote to a message in chat. Moreover it’s very wasteful with screen real estate.
I’d also add that since my company moved to 365, about once every two weeks I get some email from it dept talking about service level disruptions.
And in the meantime it emails it’s creepy “we were watching your productivity” messages weekly.
Not a fan.
I’d also add that since my company moved to 365, about once every two weeks I get some email from it dept talking about service level disruptions.
And in the meantime it emails it’s creepy “we were watching your productivity” messages weekly.
Not a fan.
> I don’t get updates and notifications about channels I’m following like I should
This sounds weird, like a configuration or permissions issue. Those basic features work flawlessly.
This sounds weird, like a configuration or permissions issue. Those basic features work flawlessly.
What happened with Dark Sky? I have used it for years and it seems just as good as ever. And it’s one of the few iPhone apps I give full location information to so I like that it’s owned by Apple since they have that info anyway.
Then maybe knowing that Screenhero's founders went on to create Screen[0] will assuage some of the anger.
Also, maybe it doesn't make it better, but it sounds like Slack didn't intend[1] to do this.
[0] https://screen.so/
[1] https://www.notion.so/Screen-Making-WFH-Work-57df16351a884bc...
Also, maybe it doesn't make it better, but it sounds like Slack didn't intend[1] to do this.
[0] https://screen.so/
[1] https://www.notion.so/Screen-Making-WFH-Work-57df16351a884bc...
Tangential anecdote, the ScreenHero founders were in the same 4 unit apartment building as our first office at ZenPayroll/Gusto. They're amazing humans. We were all happy for them when they got acquired, and I'm glad that they get to do their thing now that the promise of Slack didn't work out.
Can it record?
Screen Hero was light years ahead of anything on the market a few years ago. I'm not sure why they didn't integrate it into a simple feature button in Slack.
> Screen Hero was light years ahead of anything on the market a few years ago. I'm not sure why they didn't integrate it into a simple feature button in Slack.
They claim they did, but Slack screensharing is nowhere near what Screenhero's was.
A more Screenhero-like replacement is Tuple: https://tuple.app/
They claim they did, but Slack screensharing is nowhere near what Screenhero's was.
A more Screenhero-like replacement is Tuple: https://tuple.app/
I think most of the value of Slack was cultural rather than technological. It was in getting people to discover/communicate via these abstractions of channels rather than point to point. This provides a lot of value in a company when you don’t know the specific person to talk to or want to talk to a group rather than one person.
EDIT: It also allows bystanders to learn from or keep abreast of the conversation.
However, this cultural practice can be easily transferred to another tool.
As an external observer, Slack seemed to have various issues that prevented it from innovating further.
One was lack of vision of how to innovate further. I think this often happens when someone stumbles onto an idea. They don’t have deep reasoning or conviction of where to go further.
Another issue is that they seemed to have other cultural preoccupations for a time. Look at the cultural discussions brewing when their growth was exploding. They have since stepped back from that but I think it slowed them down.
I don’t think these helped when you have a competitor that can integrate their entire suite of products into their chat system while effectively selling the chat for free. Slack didn’t even integrate as well or as quickly.
Slack wasn’t innovating enough to not be overtaken.
EDIT: It also allows bystanders to learn from or keep abreast of the conversation.
However, this cultural practice can be easily transferred to another tool.
As an external observer, Slack seemed to have various issues that prevented it from innovating further.
One was lack of vision of how to innovate further. I think this often happens when someone stumbles onto an idea. They don’t have deep reasoning or conviction of where to go further.
Another issue is that they seemed to have other cultural preoccupations for a time. Look at the cultural discussions brewing when their growth was exploding. They have since stepped back from that but I think it slowed them down.
I don’t think these helped when you have a competitor that can integrate their entire suite of products into their chat system while effectively selling the chat for free. Slack didn’t even integrate as well or as quickly.
Slack wasn’t innovating enough to not be overtaken.
>It was in getting people to discover/communicate via these abstractions of channels rather than point to point.
Do you mean Slack is or was the first to get users to communicate over channels (vs point to point) in a business or enterprise setting?
I’m honestly not sure about what innovation came out of Slack. I worked for a startup in the early 2000s, and we ran our own IRC channels.
I’m only vaguely familiar with Slack, but what am I missing?
Do you mean Slack is or was the first to get users to communicate over channels (vs point to point) in a business or enterprise setting?
I’m honestly not sure about what innovation came out of Slack. I worked for a startup in the early 2000s, and we ran our own IRC channels.
I’m only vaguely familiar with Slack, but what am I missing?
I have a limited perspective but my experience was in getting acquired by a larger company that used Slack. In the larger company, especially when you first join, you don’t know who to talk to to get information you need or to coordinate work. This was partly due to the by design self service/decentralized culture of the company.
The use of channels was eminently useful then. You discover the general channel to use and then people that you didn’t previously know can help you. Also it doesn’t have to be a specific person helping you. Different people can help you at different times and with different questions. Likewise, you return the favor.
Also, you can then snoop in on a channel to keep track of areas you are interested in. This was a way of extracting and sharing institutional knowledge.
Lastly, you can create temporary channels for coordinating projects.
Although channels existed before, this was the first setting that I found it used extensively and effectively in this way. Perhaps most importantly to getting the whole system to work, there were cultural expectations placed on groups responsible for particular channels of being timely and helpful in replies.
Therefore you would get replies to questions in seconds or minutes. That was very useful in getting unblocked and unblocking others. You would almost never encounter the flame wars that you would see on Hacker News (well besides the social channels).
The organizational environment and the culture of how to use channels is what I mean when I say the innovation was cultural. Divorce channels from the environment or culture and you will see very different outcomes.
The use of channels was eminently useful then. You discover the general channel to use and then people that you didn’t previously know can help you. Also it doesn’t have to be a specific person helping you. Different people can help you at different times and with different questions. Likewise, you return the favor.
Also, you can then snoop in on a channel to keep track of areas you are interested in. This was a way of extracting and sharing institutional knowledge.
Lastly, you can create temporary channels for coordinating projects.
Although channels existed before, this was the first setting that I found it used extensively and effectively in this way. Perhaps most importantly to getting the whole system to work, there were cultural expectations placed on groups responsible for particular channels of being timely and helpful in replies.
Therefore you would get replies to questions in seconds or minutes. That was very useful in getting unblocked and unblocking others. You would almost never encounter the flame wars that you would see on Hacker News (well besides the social channels).
The organizational environment and the culture of how to use channels is what I mean when I say the innovation was cultural. Divorce channels from the environment or culture and you will see very different outcomes.
I completely agree. I've been using Slack for a couple years with a couple of niche groups. Besides the occasional small UI changes it has felt dead for a long time. I suppose to make it not feel like that I could get more involved with adding integrations & whatnot. But on the surface it just feels like a dead chat product without any major improvements in a very long time.
On the contrary, I'm happy that Slack chose to do one thing extremely well rather than stretch itself thin releasing half-baked an unnecessary products. There are plenty of good services for docs, storage, whiteboarding etc., and I don't need any of them shoved in my Slack client.
But they are not doing it "extremely" well. It's shoddy, spotty, resource-hog. It's (is/was) innovative, but it's no longer an amazing added value over running your own (RocketChet) or picking a cheaper option.
I agree with you, maybe Salesforce will let it continue focusing on its niche. It’s working for Heroku.
I think they did innovate, just not in ways that we-who-post-on Hacker News benefit from.
1. Shared channels are amazing
2. The "Enterprise Grid" was the first viable enterprise chat product. Slack made chat ubiquitous at places like IBM.
It's easy to blow off #2, but I think it's big. It was big enough to threaten MS Office.
1. Shared channels are amazing
2. The "Enterprise Grid" was the first viable enterprise chat product. Slack made chat ubiquitous at places like IBM.
It's easy to blow off #2, but I think it's big. It was big enough to threaten MS Office.
I don’t have experience with Enterprise Grid but shared channels are absolutely amazing. We have shared channels with vendors, partners and customers and across all functions I haven’t heard a bad word about them (except that only IT can set them up but that might be a permission thing on our side)
Shared channels are a godsend for startups trying to figure out their support story. Forums have been long known to suck, shared channels are much more responsive.
There are obvious downsides but the benefits outweigh them. I really don't want to go back to forums and email for customers.
There are obvious downsides but the benefits outweigh them. I really don't want to go back to forums and email for customers.
Made chat ubiquitous at IBM?
Maybe I'm a greybeard, but IBM made their own chat product that was ubique-itous* enough that Sametime became a verb there...
* Ubique is the company Lotus bought before IBM bought Lotus, before IBM sold the scraps to HCL.
Maybe I'm a greybeard, but IBM made their own chat product that was ubique-itous* enough that Sametime became a verb there...
* Ubique is the company Lotus bought before IBM bought Lotus, before IBM sold the scraps to HCL.
Sametime seemed to have an AOLIM connection too; or was that imagined?
I completely agree with you on this. Companies have to innovate or they die. To me Slack had plenty of chances to go beyond their initial product. Imagine if they incorporated Screen Hero into Slack and poured resources to reduce latency and better real time collaboration as if you were a feet away from your coworker. Would Microsoft be able to replicate all of that from scratch?
You also have to consider that if you're a startup you can be a lot more agile because you deal with a lot less bullshit. Microsoft probably has tons of red tape and they are also spread thin. Their design space is also restricted in that they have to follow existing patterns. Slack should have been able to roam the earth however they wished. But they didn't. Slack had the lead and momentum but they blew it.
I don't see Teams as necessarily a bad thing as the article implies. Every product we have is a derivative of something else. It fosters innovation.
You also have to consider that if you're a startup you can be a lot more agile because you deal with a lot less bullshit. Microsoft probably has tons of red tape and they are also spread thin. Their design space is also restricted in that they have to follow existing patterns. Slack should have been able to roam the earth however they wished. But they didn't. Slack had the lead and momentum but they blew it.
I don't see Teams as necessarily a bad thing as the article implies. Every product we have is a derivative of something else. It fosters innovation.
Why would a chat app do any things? Why does an application need to continuously grow to be useful?
Because it’s a public company now. Shareholders demand growth or they’ll just invest in other high growth companies.
Bootstrapped products/companies like Campfire by 37Signals didn’t need to grow, but they also stopped innovating and the chat frature became just a feature inside basecamp.
I think it’s really how companies are structured.
The way Slack was positioned, it also had to grow or it will get taken over by a competitor like teams, or risk getting bought out which is what happened. Maybe the stakes are different when you’re #1 vs #10 in tech!
Bootstrapped products/companies like Campfire by 37Signals didn’t need to grow, but they also stopped innovating and the chat frature became just a feature inside basecamp.
I think it’s really how companies are structured.
The way Slack was positioned, it also had to grow or it will get taken over by a competitor like teams, or risk getting bought out which is what happened. Maybe the stakes are different when you’re #1 vs #10 in tech!
I find it funny that HN can criticize Slack for sticking to their main product without adding new collaboration features, while criticizing Dropbox for doing exactly the opposite.
I'm not very familiar with Dropbox, but I would not be surprised if both were in fact wrong.
In the closest strategy to what slack did, one would define a main product and then optimize away any prototype bloat. As far as I observed, Slack's clients stayed pretty awful and they were trying to do Dropbox's strategy without success.
In the closest strategy to what slack did, one would define a main product and then optimize away any prototype bloat. As far as I observed, Slack's clients stayed pretty awful and they were trying to do Dropbox's strategy without success.
That's because the thing that killed Slack wasn't Microsoft - it wasn't a bunch of horseshit executives say just before their retirement into angel investing - but Discord.
Interesting! Do you know of any workplaces using Discord?
Discord isn't enterprise software and I feel really bad for anyone who wants to use it as such. Microsoft Teams is without a doubt the only thing threatening Slack, Discord is an entirely different beast.
Discord is why Slack doesn't have mass consumer appeal. They can't compete in that market.
They aren’t going after the same demo though. The market is big enough for both of them to exist. The path for Discord is a lot more hazy than Slack imo.
I think for Slack to be truly bigger than it got, it needed both demos. Being workplace only has a ceiling.
Slacks pricing is what they don't have mass consumer appeal. I'm not paying to make the logs you're obviously keeping anyway visible lmao
As a business with employees sure, but as a community? You couldn't have moved everyone to discord faster
As a business with employees sure, but as a community? You couldn't have moved everyone to discord faster
Who wants mass consumer appeal? Consumers don't pay for things.
Discord has like a $2billion valuation and no exit. Slack had a $24 billion IPO. Consumer software is not as valuable as enterprise.
Discord has like a $2billion valuation and no exit. Slack had a $24 billion IPO. Consumer software is not as valuable as enterprise.
$currentjob switched to Teams 7 months ago, and I still miss Slack every day.
The only ones who I haven't heard lament the switch are the ones whose budget Slack used to (and o365 does) cone from.
The only ones who I haven't heard lament the switch are the ones whose budget Slack used to (and o365 does) cone from.
The reality is that a lot of enterprises and organizations don't really need a chat service. It's not a must for them.
On the other hand, what knowledge worker today can function without video conferencing, desktop sharing, file sharing and VoIP?
No that many.
Teams provide all of that natively. That's why they're wining.
Let's be frank, if Teams had been just a chat application, it would never have had the success it currently has, even as part of O365. Being bundled with something popular is not a guaranty of success. IE is a very good example of that.
The reality is that MS made Teams a complete collaboration platform and Slack couldn't do the same with their product.
On the other hand, what knowledge worker today can function without video conferencing, desktop sharing, file sharing and VoIP?
No that many.
Teams provide all of that natively. That's why they're wining.
Let's be frank, if Teams had been just a chat application, it would never have had the success it currently has, even as part of O365. Being bundled with something popular is not a guaranty of success. IE is a very good example of that.
The reality is that MS made Teams a complete collaboration platform and Slack couldn't do the same with their product.
I disagree that Slack couldn’t have survived when Zoom exists. We will see where Zoom is 5 years; but Slack never expanded beyond Chat and their video calling product just isn’t competitive.
From the outside, Teams (and Zooms) growth was accelerated because video conferencing became way more important. People didn’t need video conferencing pre-COVID because that would have just been a meeting. When they suddenly did, Slack wasn’t that good. My pet peeve continues to be that on Slack I cannot see someone’s screen on iOS - that one annoyance had us move to Zoom then teams.
An argument could be made that Slack was ultimately unable to compete in video by virtue of not having an army of high paid engineers to throw at the problem like MS does, but the features that Slack chose to focus on (like the WYSIWG editor) doesn’t say that to me
From the outside, Teams (and Zooms) growth was accelerated because video conferencing became way more important. People didn’t need video conferencing pre-COVID because that would have just been a meeting. When they suddenly did, Slack wasn’t that good. My pet peeve continues to be that on Slack I cannot see someone’s screen on iOS - that one annoyance had us move to Zoom then teams.
An argument could be made that Slack was ultimately unable to compete in video by virtue of not having an army of high paid engineers to throw at the problem like MS does, but the features that Slack chose to focus on (like the WYSIWG editor) doesn’t say that to me
My suspicion is that slack has hit the wall with their core product. User growth has flattened and that's why we're seeing a pivot to random experiments in layout and UI and no meaningful new features. Video conference is barely usable, but somehow adding user icons and a command pop-up (that doesn't support all their commands) all made it out to production.
The most meaningful thing they've had recently is the cross-org shared channel thing, which is awesome when it works but still onerous to manage. That was two years ago. And it doesn't open up that many new users, it just keeps people in slack longer (good for stickiness, bad for growth).
The most meaningful thing they've had recently is the cross-org shared channel thing, which is awesome when it works but still onerous to manage. That was two years ago. And it doesn't open up that many new users, it just keeps people in slack longer (good for stickiness, bad for growth).
In those same four years where Slack’s user base tripled, Microsoft Teams claims it gained 115 million users, showing the world that product quality can’t save a startup when Big Tech wants a piece.
This is the important point: because of tech monopolies it is no longer possible to compete on software quality. This is why Congress needs to break them up.
This is the important point: because of tech monopolies it is no longer possible to compete on software quality. This is why Congress needs to break them up.
I've done a lot of video calls since pandemic started, usually with our company's chosen vendor, but with some outside companies, it's on their system. It was only a couple weeks ago that I experienced my first Teams call ever, while I've had many external zoom calls, many Google, some Chime, some webex, and I've had many, many external Slack invites.
I wonder if Microsoft's Teams numbers were pumped up by it being freely included in O365 subs. "Oh you're a paying O365 customer; we'll just go ahead and count your included Teams sub as a Teams sub."
I wonder if Microsoft's Teams numbers were pumped up by it being freely included in O365 subs. "Oh you're a paying O365 customer; we'll just go ahead and count your included Teams sub as a Teams sub."
I dunno. We got Office 365. If Slack was significantly better than Teams I'm pretty sure we'd pay for it.
As it stands it seems to be the other way around, at least for the features we care the most about (meetings, screen sharing, voice calls).
So I think it's possible to compete on quality, but it's definitely harder as a lot of people will get by with a lower-quality offering.
As it stands it seems to be the other way around, at least for the features we care the most about (meetings, screen sharing, voice calls).
So I think it's possible to compete on quality, but it's definitely harder as a lot of people will get by with a lower-quality offering.
Slack will add the calling capabilities of Zoom and Zoom will need to add the chat system of slack.
It would have made more sense for either of the two to buy the other, or some kind of merger tbh.
> Being bundled with something popular is not a guaranty of success. IE is a very good example of that.
Not sure what the example of IE would entail. IE was insanely popular during its prime of 2006-2008. Even today, Chrome has not captured as much of the market as IE6 did at that time.
It was only years of neglect (i.e nearly the entire IE6 team was reassigned to other projects), and governmental intervention that allowed other browsers to even have a significant plurality.
So yes, you can win merely by being bundled for free with another popular product.
If Slack for instance just came preinstalled on iOS/OSX, then people would have standardized on it so long as it was also available on Windows.
Not sure what the example of IE would entail. IE was insanely popular during its prime of 2006-2008. Even today, Chrome has not captured as much of the market as IE6 did at that time.
It was only years of neglect (i.e nearly the entire IE6 team was reassigned to other projects), and governmental intervention that allowed other browsers to even have a significant plurality.
So yes, you can win merely by being bundled for free with another popular product.
If Slack for instance just came preinstalled on iOS/OSX, then people would have standardized on it so long as it was also available on Windows.
To add to this, bundling IE with Windows effectively killed the browser market. Netscape anyone? Microsoft was even subject to an anti-trust case centered around their IE handling:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
Dominated, maybe. But definitely not killed. There was never just one contender for the crown. IE vs Netscape, then IE vs. Firefox nee Firebird nee Phoenix, then IE vs Firefox vs Chrome, and now Firefox vs Chrome
There's a bit of a gap between when netscape was relavent and when firefox/firebird/phoneix was.
Yes there were other browsers, and yes there existed people who used them, but it was very small
Yes there were other browsers, and yes there existed people who used them, but it was very small
It proves Jobs' adage that "this is not a company, this is a feature." He was talking about Dropbox at the time, but he might as well have been referring to Slack.
Yes, you CAN win by being bundled with a popular product, it helps tremendously. But I said it's no garanty.
Android is the most popular mobile OS on earth and I remember when Google+ was bundled as part of the base OS image. Even that and the huge marketing Google did wasn't enough to popularize the service and Google ended up killing it.
Android is the most popular mobile OS on earth and I remember when Google+ was bundled as part of the base OS image. Even that and the huge marketing Google did wasn't enough to popularize the service and Google ended up killing it.
At my current job, you would have to pry Slack from my cold, dead hands. I would rather deal with conference calls on personal cell phones than go back to e.g. Chime that Amazon used. For me, it's not just about communication (although there are 1,000 ways that Slack reduces friction), it's also about the searchable archives. It's the equivalent of Stack Overflow for our internal issues.
That's funny because there's a stack overflow for business and it was passed over for slack.
Another thing is -- the public stack overflow is really nice for reference, but in my experience I don't like the culture around it. It isn't inclusive. The thing that turned me off was when they would shut down a question because it would lead to extended discussion.
Now slack allows extended discussion - properly off in a thread - and through that fosters a corporate culture in a good way.
Another thing is -- the public stack overflow is really nice for reference, but in my experience I don't like the culture around it. It isn't inclusive. The thing that turned me off was when they would shut down a question because it would lead to extended discussion.
Now slack allows extended discussion - properly off in a thread - and through that fosters a corporate culture in a good way.
Slack seems like they already had everything they needed. You can do video calls natively in Slack. You can store and transfer files. They just didn’t put the pieces together; everything was kept as a minor complement to chat.
That said, I’m not sure they could have competed with Teams in MS corporate deployments under any circumstances. If a company is already using Outlook, Exchange, AD, O365, Teams plugs in very nicely. But, seems like that still leaves a pretty big market.
That said, I’m not sure they could have competed with Teams in MS corporate deployments under any circumstances. If a company is already using Outlook, Exchange, AD, O365, Teams plugs in very nicely. But, seems like that still leaves a pretty big market.
> The reality is that a lot of enterprises and organizations don't really need a chat service. It's not a must for them.
I don't understand this. Chat has always been an integral part of work in all my jobs. Before Slack it was Skype. I can't imagine working through email only. It would be hard enough when we were sitting in the same office but impossible now when we're remote.
I don't understand this. Chat has always been an integral part of work in all my jobs. Before Slack it was Skype. I can't imagine working through email only. It would be hard enough when we were sitting in the same office but impossible now when we're remote.
I'm saying a lot of organization don't see value in something similar to IRC like Slack. Obviously IM is different, but I work for an MSP that is, among other things, deploying Teams, and this has been my observation.
I've seen teams go from mailing word files back and forth with "revision dates" on them, to using Teams to manage their files.
SharePoint has always been too complicated for most people to use, but part of Teams is an easier to use UI over SharePoint.
Huge problem solved, right there.
SharePoint has always been too complicated for most people to use, but part of Teams is an easier to use UI over SharePoint.
Huge problem solved, right there.
Yeah, slack needs this badly.
I don't think any enterprise can survive without chat.
while i do love slack, it seems like ms teams was the iphone(smartphone) to blackberry.
... then again, not at all apples to apples, since ms was already mastering the corporate world.
I don't want more collaboration. Slack is enough of a distraction. Something integrated with even more tools sounds like a detractor to me.
So theres an interesting concept in the bible that I have thought about more and more that seems like it would help the problem of concentration of power and large firms.
In the Old Testament God commanded the israelites that every 7th 7th year (or every 49 years basically) was to be a year of jubilee. Included among the instructions for the year of jubilee was the requirement that all debts be forgiven and all land revert to it's ancestral owners. Basically the financial system gets reset every 49 years.
It seems to me that there are great things that can be done when a business has the right resources but at a certain point business stop competing and start regulating or burying their competition out of existance. Now of course we can't due it exactly how the bible outlines things but I've been increasingly interested in the idea of a regular societal reset on a half a century or so basis. This creates enough time for large firms to grow innovation to happen and wealth creation to happen. Whilst at the same time it prevents eternal dominance by a handful or large players .
What would y'all think of a societal reset?
In the Old Testament God commanded the israelites that every 7th 7th year (or every 49 years basically) was to be a year of jubilee. Included among the instructions for the year of jubilee was the requirement that all debts be forgiven and all land revert to it's ancestral owners. Basically the financial system gets reset every 49 years.
It seems to me that there are great things that can be done when a business has the right resources but at a certain point business stop competing and start regulating or burying their competition out of existance. Now of course we can't due it exactly how the bible outlines things but I've been increasingly interested in the idea of a regular societal reset on a half a century or so basis. This creates enough time for large firms to grow innovation to happen and wealth creation to happen. Whilst at the same time it prevents eternal dominance by a handful or large players .
What would y'all think of a societal reset?
Is it necessary though? The biggest American companies 50 years ago:
1. IBM
2. AT&T
3. Kodak
4. GM
5. Standard Oil of NJ
6. Texaco
7. Sears
8. GE
9. Polariod
10. Gulf Oil
Not a single one of these companies is in the top 10 today. (Edit: correction, one is: Exxon.) Many of the current top 10 didn't exist at all 50 years ago. Thankfully our economy seems to be dynamic enough that companies must continue to compete or lose marketshare organically.
1. IBM
2. AT&T
3. Kodak
4. GM
5. Standard Oil of NJ
6. Texaco
7. Sears
8. GE
9. Polariod
10. Gulf Oil
Not a single one of these companies is in the top 10 today. (Edit: correction, one is: Exxon.) Many of the current top 10 didn't exist at all 50 years ago. Thankfully our economy seems to be dynamic enough that companies must continue to compete or lose marketshare organically.
I don't know what these are "biggest" by (revenue? market cap?). If it's revenue, AT&T and Standard Oil of NJ (now ExxonMobil) are still in the top 10. Gulf Oil and Texaco (both now Chevron) are both in the top 15.[1] So 40% of that group is still around and quite successful.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_in_t...
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_in_t...
Usually when people says "biggest" it's by market cap.
The idea of a debt jubilee does not wipe out corporations, it wipes out current outstanding debts only. The idea would be that nobody would loan corporations so much money that they wouldn't be able to pay it back before the debt is wiped out.
Something like that could counter a lot of financial games that are played to the detriment of so many, which is why some societies had things like dept jubilees.
Something like that could counter a lot of financial games that are played to the detriment of so many, which is why some societies had things like dept jubilees.
Wouldn't this just translate into higher interest rates, to make the supply of debt financially worthwhile for the lender?
We can see this market mechanism play out in the corporate lending market where companies with high credit risk must pay double or more interest rates. A debt jubilee would simply raise the default risk on all of society and thus increase rates to compensate.
We can see this market mechanism play out in the corporate lending market where companies with high credit risk must pay double or more interest rates. A debt jubilee would simply raise the default risk on all of society and thus increase rates to compensate.
If the debt forgiveness event is scheduled well in advance (and I believe that's how these things worked) why do interest rates need to change drastically? Lenders would just need to be sure that loans are structured so that they are repaid before the jubilee.
I would think the bigger effect would be to dissuade lenders from lending more than the borrowers could repay before the debt forgiveness date. Also certain things that are inflated due to finance (like housing, cars, college) might see an adjustment to more affordable prices, or maybe some things would cycle, going up when people could borrow, and going down as the debt forgiveness event approached.
It's an interesting idea, to think about the pros and cons.
I would think the bigger effect would be to dissuade lenders from lending more than the borrowers could repay before the debt forgiveness date. Also certain things that are inflated due to finance (like housing, cars, college) might see an adjustment to more affordable prices, or maybe some things would cycle, going up when people could borrow, and going down as the debt forgiveness event approached.
It's an interesting idea, to think about the pros and cons.
Most people would be unable to get a mortgage if you were closer to the 49 year mark than not.
I wonder if it would work more like Canadian mortgages, that are renewed every five years.
Or maybe like in other countries, the price of housing would decrease to a three year loan instead of thirty.
Or maybe like in other countries, the price of housing would decrease to a three year loan instead of thirty.
The raw construction materials that make up your home are worth more than can be afforded in 36 payments, so I doubt that's a likely outcome.
Consider a jubilee date occurring in N years. The result would be that nobody is willing to lend with a maturity of more than N years. This is rather problematic as it means that primary debt markets can't function when N approaches zero. It would make it impossible for me to get a mortgage if N=5 for example, locking me unfairly out of the housing market for half a decade, artificially depressing house prices until N=0 when suddenly five years of pent up demand causes a demand spike/bubble.
I also don't agree that a jubilee date won't increase rates. The default risk is simply much higher now and therefore the rates must go up to compensate for the added risk. In the current system, debt isn't forgiven when repayments are late, which allows for lower rates since the default risk is lower. If late repayments automatically implies default due to the jubilee date, then rates must be higher.
I also don't agree that a jubilee date won't increase rates. The default risk is simply much higher now and therefore the rates must go up to compensate for the added risk. In the current system, debt isn't forgiven when repayments are late, which allows for lower rates since the default risk is lower. If late repayments automatically implies default due to the jubilee date, then rates must be higher.
I wouldn't argue that rates wouldn't go up. We might not agree on how much. For example, would jubilee in 20 years have an affect on a 5 year car loan? As far as homes go, maybe we'd just do home loans like the Canadians do, renewing/refinancing them every five years or less, timed with the debt jubilee. Doesn't need to be a big deal.
I look at it as mostly a thought exercise, questioning the way we currently handle debt. I think there is a lot of room for improvement. Maybe debt jubilees would act as a check on out-of-control debt, which seems to be a thing lately.
Take student loans. Politicians are talking about forgiving those debts. Maybe it's not such a crazy idea? But then again what they plan on doing will amount to just giving the banks the money, either inflating the money supply or treasuries that future generations have to pay back. Ugh.
I look at it as mostly a thought exercise, questioning the way we currently handle debt. I think there is a lot of room for improvement. Maybe debt jubilees would act as a check on out-of-control debt, which seems to be a thing lately.
Take student loans. Politicians are talking about forgiving those debts. Maybe it's not such a crazy idea? But then again what they plan on doing will amount to just giving the banks the money, either inflating the money supply or treasuries that future generations have to pay back. Ugh.
We have bankruptcy laws, where you don't have to wait for the broader jubilee to declare the reset.
Of course it is different in that it follows you around for a while, but there also isn't a weird enforced lending cycle (and carrying lots of debts into a jubilee might not officially follow you around, but it would follow you around).
Of course it is different in that it follows you around for a while, but there also isn't a weird enforced lending cycle (and carrying lots of debts into a jubilee might not officially follow you around, but it would follow you around).
50 years ago the two top companies in that list had just started defending expensive and long-running antitrust cases. IBM changed its behaviour to settle these cases, transforming the computer industry, and in AT&T’s case the litigation led directly to the breakup of the company. These companies didn’t lose market share “organically.”
I'd wager there were bigger societal changes between now and 50 years ago then there were in the 50-100 range. Do you have a list of top 1920 companies and if so, how does it compare to the above list (presumably 1970)?
Almost every company on that list was the target of comprehensive antitrust action by the government, so you're proving the opposite.
I don't know about a complete societal reset, but I sure would be interested in a corporate reset.
Forest fires are good for forests over the long term. They remove large old trees that are full of rot, dead wood, and parasites. Those old giants aren't using the sun's light and other resources efficiently, but they block too much light for smaller trees in the understory to grow tall enough to compete. A forest fire clears those out, returns the nutrients in them to the soil, and provides a level playing field for smaller trees to grow and compete.
I wouldn't go full Fight Club Project Mayhem, but I'd love something like a cleansing fire that periodically breaks up or disbands all corporations above a certain size.
Forest fires are good for forests over the long term. They remove large old trees that are full of rot, dead wood, and parasites. Those old giants aren't using the sun's light and other resources efficiently, but they block too much light for smaller trees in the understory to grow tall enough to compete. A forest fire clears those out, returns the nutrients in them to the soil, and provides a level playing field for smaller trees to grow and compete.
I wouldn't go full Fight Club Project Mayhem, but I'd love something like a cleansing fire that periodically breaks up or disbands all corporations above a certain size.
Except this is not what happens at all. Older, larger trees tend to have thicker bark, which lets them survive the fires, while clearing out the understory and ground level.
Forest fires reset competition at the ground level while mostly maintaining the status quo for large, established trees.
Forest fires reset competition at the ground level while mostly maintaining the status quo for large, established trees.
This is exactly the sort of dynamic that would happen in many economic "resets" and is a huge part of the reason why the ultra wealthy aren't as concerned by such resets as many people assume
> ...corporate reset...
You read my mind: this is exactly what is needed! I could not think of the right phrasing (because i, too, agree that a societal reset might not be the right thing here)...and the forest fire cleansing is an apt metaphor here. So thanks for sharing this thought!
You read my mind: this is exactly what is needed! I could not think of the right phrasing (because i, too, agree that a societal reset might not be the right thing here)...and the forest fire cleansing is an apt metaphor here. So thanks for sharing this thought!
I am fairly certain that corporate charters were originally time-limited.
If you are correct - and i don't doubt that you are - then this frustrates me even more around why corporations push to extend the life of their copyrights, trademarks, patents, etc. Patents and such were supposed to be an aid to kick things off (for a nascent economy), not survive for the long-ass life of some large conglomerate corporation to squeeze every little last drop of juice from all the existing citrus fruit! (Sorry, i guess lately i've been feeling very anti-corporation...and i haven't had my coffee yet today.)
I'm not sure what you're thinking of when you say a "societal reset". I've heard of this as debt forgiveness. No other property is interfered with. I believe it acts as a limit on how carried away, or long term entrenched, a society can get with debt.
What makes you think the forest fire metaphor is applicable? Seems like a "firebombing Dresden" metaphor could just as easily apply.
After thinking about this idea for a while, it occurred to me: couldn't the same thing be accomplished by banning inheritance? Debts are already forgiven upon death. The average human life isn't that much longer than 50 years, and the resets would be happening continuously.
This is an entirely different idea. Banning inheritance makes corporations even more powerful, as they can increase their wealth from one generation to another and families cannot.
> Banning inheritance makes corporations even more powerful
Corporations are legal fictions through which their owners operated. If ownership of corporations can’t be inherited, it doesn’t make “corporations” more powerful, it just distributes power over corporations (presuming that the absence of inheritance means that assets escheat to the State, and that the State itself is fundamentally democratic.)
Corporations are legal fictions through which their owners operated. If ownership of corporations can’t be inherited, it doesn’t make “corporations” more powerful, it just distributes power over corporations (presuming that the absence of inheritance means that assets escheat to the State, and that the State itself is fundamentally democratic.)
How do you prevent them people from gifting their inheritance while they are alive?
> Debts are already forgiven upon death
The dead person's estate is responsible for paying back creditors, even if that means liquidating the estate to do so.
The dead person's estate is responsible for paying back creditors, even if that means liquidating the estate to do so.
yes, after the requisite math equations are complete, the remaining debt is forgiven.
> Debts are already forgiven upon death.
Not quite. You should have life insurance and something the bank can seize to be able to get financing. So even if you die the bank can recover some of the principal. You can also file Chapter 11; that's actually a reset.
Not quite. You should have life insurance and something the bank can seize to be able to get financing. So even if you die the bank can recover some of the principal. You can also file Chapter 11; that's actually a reset.
What about just limiting inheritance to, say, 500k per child?
Any fixed amount only makes sense in a world with sound money, otherwise inflation or deflation will make the fixed number shift over time. Unfortunately because of these pernicious "inflation targets" with monetary and fiscal policy being popular the purchasing power of currency isn't even being attempted to be held stable in many parts of the world at the moment.
Why is inflation targeting pernicious? To the extent that currency is a replacement for bartering, a positive inflation rate is a mechanism for enforcing a sort of temporal locality in that conceptual bartering. Why is that bad, or else what other functions is currency serving where inflation targeting is undesirable?
Off the top of my head, what happens to any farm, family business, or house in California?
Not sure. Maybe a policy like this stops crazy property inflation? And limits farm sizes? Meaning, local agriculture flourishes?
I think it's better for people to stop working when they get pretty rich, like $20mil. People should stop working when they get rich enough to pay for an awesome life, and give someone else the chance. And if they actually enjoy working, they can do it pro bono.
I do not trust the uber rich to mind their own business and stay out of other people's lives.
I think it's better for people to stop working when they get pretty rich, like $20mil. People should stop working when they get rich enough to pay for an awesome life, and give someone else the chance. And if they actually enjoy working, they can do it pro bono.
I do not trust the uber rich to mind their own business and stay out of other people's lives.
Accruement of those levels of wealth is usually the result of ownership, and not labor.
This view comes from the largely flawed assumption that making money is a zero or negative sum endeavour. In some cases it is but in many it's not. Whatever you think of his character, if Musk just threw in the towel at PayPal we wouldn't have SpaceX. I can say the same thing for Jobs, eg if he gave up after Next where would Apple be.
Making money is generally a positive sum endeavour as long as you're not generating unpriced externalities such as carbon pollution, and as such I don't like the idea that rich people stop working after they're rich. As long as they're not creating externalities we want them to continue building and contributing to society. It's a much better alternative to them relaxing on a yacht somewhere, which contributes nothing.
It's also inaccurate to think that making money by building crowds out other people from doing so. The opposite is the case. It's the same mindset behind the "immigrants took our jobs" train of thinking.
Making money is generally a positive sum endeavour as long as you're not generating unpriced externalities such as carbon pollution, and as such I don't like the idea that rich people stop working after they're rich. As long as they're not creating externalities we want them to continue building and contributing to society. It's a much better alternative to them relaxing on a yacht somewhere, which contributes nothing.
It's also inaccurate to think that making money by building crowds out other people from doing so. The opposite is the case. It's the same mindset behind the "immigrants took our jobs" train of thinking.
People can work as much as they want. They just don't get paid after $20mil.
I'm not worried about making money being zero sum. I'm worried about uber rich people doing uncalled for things with too much money. No one should have that kind of power.
I'm not worried about making money being zero sum. I'm worried about uber rich people doing uncalled for things with too much money. No one should have that kind of power.
What happens to any startup founder when the company hits 20 million? Do you propose we confiscate the extra shares? Obviously, putting a 20million dollar cap on the value of any startup would be profoundly distorting to the market for startups.
Ownership in a company that grows in value is not equivalent to getting paid (which is approximate 100% of the click bate tweets).
> No one should have that kind of power.
I fundamentally disagree. I strongly prefer that Bill Gates gets to spend his money the way that he sees fit rather than it go to the federal government. Just the same with Elon Musk and Warren Buffet.
> No one should have that kind of power.
I fundamentally disagree. I strongly prefer that Bill Gates gets to spend his money the way that he sees fit rather than it go to the federal government. Just the same with Elon Musk and Warren Buffet.
I think we'll find a lot of the people who are currently uber rich would've either stopped working at $20 million (which would've been a big loss to the economy and society at large), or they would've gone to another country (as we see in countries with a wealth tax in EU - also a big loss). Money continues to be a motive even for those with enough to satisfy every need, because it becomes a marker of status, achievement, etc. If you remove that motive then you remove the output of some of our best minds.
You'll certainly remove their clout over society but I think you also need to consider the significant downsides to this proposal. Maybe you would be better off finding ways to limit the power of rich people over society (eg political contribution laws) instead of trying to ban being rich?
You'll certainly remove their clout over society but I think you also need to consider the significant downsides to this proposal. Maybe you would be better off finding ways to limit the power of rich people over society (eg political contribution laws) instead of trying to ban being rich?
I think the issue is that people don't work to have money. They work so they can:
1. Have real practical advantage over other people in their community 2. Have real practical power to shape their community
For #1 that's mostly the middle class, who want better schools for their children, and safe pleasant environments for their families. Actions that remove that incentive, make the middle class irrelevant. Very few people are willing to work 9+ hour days during the start of their career, just so they can have more toys, and not a larger house in a good neighborhood later in life.
For #2 that's mostly the elite. If they're denied influence via money, they'll simply go into politics or religion where we'll end up with a society shaped by lucky charismatic people, and not necessarily anyone who has any skill. At least we can say non-hereditary wealthy people are lucky, and skilled as opposed to just being lucky.
1. Have real practical advantage over other people in their community 2. Have real practical power to shape their community
For #1 that's mostly the middle class, who want better schools for their children, and safe pleasant environments for their families. Actions that remove that incentive, make the middle class irrelevant. Very few people are willing to work 9+ hour days during the start of their career, just so they can have more toys, and not a larger house in a good neighborhood later in life.
For #2 that's mostly the elite. If they're denied influence via money, they'll simply go into politics or religion where we'll end up with a society shaped by lucky charismatic people, and not necessarily anyone who has any skill. At least we can say non-hereditary wealthy people are lucky, and skilled as opposed to just being lucky.
> What about just limiting inheritance to, say, 500k per child?
What about just charging income tax on inheritance (but allowing deferral of tax recognition of windfall income over a period of, say, up to 10 years from the date of receipt.)
What about just charging income tax on inheritance (but allowing deferral of tax recognition of windfall income over a period of, say, up to 10 years from the date of receipt.)
How would any of that contribute to a financial reset?
I wonder if this would massively increase conspicuous and frivolous consumption. Some may go the direction of Bill Gates, but others may not be so benevolent. At least when wealth is conserved in the family unit it's mostly passively invested in the economy as capital supply.
Yes, estate taxes are progressive taxes. See Bernie Sanders' proposal:
https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/recent-business/a-pr....
https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/recent-business/a-pr....
So there are some noted problems with doing so. Namely, reset starting -when-? At a time of large scale inequality? I.e., millionaire owners of much of NY get locked in as owners for all future generations, and are unable to sell the land, only lease it? Does that lack of salability reduce their economic power sufficiently?
Likewise individuals; for anyone who doesn't own land at the start of the system, is there a path to land ownership?
Likewise individuals; for anyone who doesn't own land at the start of the system, is there a path to land ownership?
Well to be clear I'm not saying we should just take what is directly in the bible and lift and shift it, there would obviously be substantial differences between the implementation now and then. As for the when I would say a regular calander cycle, every 50 years or so. Again this is more of the kernel of an idea than a fleshed out plan.
Sure, but those questions have to be answered. Is there a system that guarantees people can own something? Is there a system that prevents it from being inherited? Else you prevent wealth generation for anyone coming to the country anew.
I agree that a reset on the extravagantly wealthy is needed...but that can also just take the form of, say, a wealth tax, without also raising questions on how new people enter the system fairly.
I agree that a reset on the extravagantly wealthy is needed...but that can also just take the form of, say, a wealth tax, without also raising questions on how new people enter the system fairly.
There's a reason this is just the kernel of an idea. It's because any possible plan you make off it will very quickly make its manifest unfairness obvious.
We aren't living in ancient times, and the distribution of wealth and debt in the world isn't what it used to be. Debt isn't "our crop failed and my family is going to starve this year" anymore.
We aren't living in ancient times, and the distribution of wealth and debt in the world isn't what it used to be. Debt isn't "our crop failed and my family is going to starve this year" anymore.
It can reset on a schedule. Everybody knows it's coming. It ensures that debt's don't grow so much that they warp other aspects of the economy. I believe it was done in the past to avoid the large scale virtual enslavement of the poor via debt. It was meant to be a relief valve of sorts.
Interest rates would skyrocket because the default risk of lendees just went up a lot. I'm not a fan of this idea, the debt market will figure out a way to be compensated all the same (or else refuse to provision debt, which is also a bad outcome).
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Sure, the societal reset would start with promises of local manufacturing jobs but pretty soon they’d be getting guillotines imported from Shenzhen.
Ideas of large social changes always sound good in the abstract, but once you propose a real plan the devil is always in the details. In the US, we can’t even agree to let the government forgive student loan debt it already owns — but somehow completely reworking corporate debt and property will work/help/ever possibly happen?
Ideas of large social changes always sound good in the abstract, but once you propose a real plan the devil is always in the details. In the US, we can’t even agree to let the government forgive student loan debt it already owns — but somehow completely reworking corporate debt and property will work/help/ever possibly happen?
> all land revert to it's ancestral owners
Because those who's great great great great great grandfather did well out of knowing Henry 8th don't already get enough headstart in life?
Land shouldn't be owned by the people, with rent paid yearly to the people based on its unimproved value.
Because those who's great great great great great grandfather did well out of knowing Henry 8th don't already get enough headstart in life?
Land shouldn't be owned by the people, with rent paid yearly to the people based on its unimproved value.
This would make huge waves of distortions around these events. Who is going to be able to get a 30 year mortgage to buy a house if the debt reset is in 15 years? Now only people who can afford 15 year mortgages. As you get closer it gets worse. Then it all resets after.
I think the problems you’re trying to address with this need to be addressed in a more fundamental and continuous way.
I think the problems you’re trying to address with this need to be addressed in a more fundamental and continuous way.
You would buy fractional ownership in a house.
You want a societal reset? WW2 was a societal reset. The Bolshevik Revolution was a societal reset. Napoleon was a societal reset. The 30 Years War was a societal reset.
I hope I never see a societal reset.
I hope I never see a societal reset.
Agreed . Yet we all benefit from these past resets.
This would cause even more short term thinking than we currently have. We need more companies that take on long term goals and projects.
I feel like the US has a similar (if incidental) cycle around antitrust. When the market is humming along regulators turn a blind eye, the public doesn't really care, etc. Over time the big companies get bigger and bigger, eating more and more smaller companies, until a breaking point is reached and suddenly everyone cares again and we have major action taken. Then the cycle starts again.
Late to the party but wanted to make sure to contribute this excellent talk by the late David Graeber about the history of debt. It includes the concept of Jubilee.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZIINXhGDcs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZIINXhGDcs
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I kind of like the idea, in principle. But in practice...
Let's say you wipe out debts. And let's say that my pension was invested in those debts. That's going to be a bit problematic.
Let's say you reset companies. Including, say, Intel and AMD. The CPU monopoly is wiped out. Oh, yeah, and Microsoft. But next month I want to buy a computer. Can anybody make me an x86 chip? Can I get Windows, assuming that I want it? Or do I have to run Linux on a public-domain chip?
It's not going to be easy to maintain continuity of supply while shaking up firms that dominate important markets.
Let's say you wipe out debts. And let's say that my pension was invested in those debts. That's going to be a bit problematic.
Let's say you reset companies. Including, say, Intel and AMD. The CPU monopoly is wiped out. Oh, yeah, and Microsoft. But next month I want to buy a computer. Can anybody make me an x86 chip? Can I get Windows, assuming that I want it? Or do I have to run Linux on a public-domain chip?
It's not going to be easy to maintain continuity of supply while shaking up firms that dominate important markets.
It would be great. We need a way of preventing "death by a thousand cuts" by bloated organizations and processes. I also think it would be good to upturn most processes since people learn how to exploit systems quite quickly.
But maybe it would be better to reset in a cascading fashion, rather than all at once.
But maybe it would be better to reset in a cascading fashion, rather than all at once.
There are other and more recent precedents for this - all debt periodically being forgiven. Graeber mentions this in is book "Debt: The First 5000 Years". Everybody knows it is coming, so the market works around it. I imagine it acts as a check on inflation via too many financial games.
So you're born 15 years into the reset.
When you're 18, you're about halfway through. If you work hard for 10 years to accumulate wealth, add value, whatever, by the time you're ~40, it's about to all get taken away. What's the point?
When you're 18, you're about halfway through. If you work hard for 10 years to accumulate wealth, add value, whatever, by the time you're ~40, it's about to all get taken away. What's the point?
How about banning debt? People live according to their means?
No debt. Just gifts or charity.
No debt. Just gifts or charity.
No mortgages, just pay rent to the landowning class forever?
Of course the US is far too much of a debt-based society for things to change (well, without a lot of violence and instability) at this point, but mortgages aren't a thing everywhere. Home ownership does not automatically equal debt.
Currently we have a debt based monetary system, so banning debt means we would need an entirely different monetary system. This might be worth doing but there's a lot of challenges, specifically debt in some small amounts allows flexibility and options that don't exist otherwise. Some other mechanism to fund future work would need to be created to fill that gap.
https://www.weforum.org/great-reset - not based on jubilee, but rather seeing covid-19 as an opportunity to fix some of the problems which the pandemic is bringing to (more) light.
I wonder what that did to financial transactions in the 48th year?
I suppose it's all a matter of perspective. As a bootstrapped company, we often worry that someone with lots of venture funding (like Slack) will enter our space with a free product, making it difficult for those of us who actually have to turn a profit to compete.
No doubt this happened with both Google Chat and Microsoft Teams - Google and Microsoft continue to gain marketshare from companies that previously were running their own email/file servers, so any attempt to get them to move to slack is going to be an uphill battle.
if you often worry about that, you should consider that you are a feature, not a company. build your erm product appropriately. ie be more attractive to acquire than compete against.
I think this is overblown. Slack was perfectly capable of remaining a stand alone company. They just wouldn't have been worth ~30 billion.
You’re missing the point. The outcomes and upside are irrelevant, what is relevant is that Microsoft’s only strategy to attack was to give it away for free and bundle it, creating a profoundly unfair (and illegal) advantage that continues the trend of consolidating power and reducing choice.
Free? Office365 isn't exactly free. Its arguably the new/better (subjective, I guess, both kinda suck) version of Skype for Business.
Slack is actually free to use (last I checked), if you don't care about the chat history.
Slack is actually free to use (last I checked), if you don't care about the chat history.
If an electricity company would offer a TV to each customer without any surcharge, then yes that’d be free, because customers are paying the same for less before. So, while I get your point, we are near unfair use of a monopoly situation here. Such a thing is good first for consumers, but once the companies own the monopoly, they own the pricing and can charge more than the former competitor used to, while customers becomes slave of one single monopolist.
Even if you pay the chat history is a massive pain in the ass to get out of the system, something that was a deal breaker for me when I was running a business.
Whenever I build the next feature on my roadmap, have I now bundled and given away for free something that could have been a standalone company? Is there a bright line where it flips from incremental feature additions to anticompetitive behavior?
Predatory pricing is a component of anti trust but a very difficult one to prove legally. One must prove that by giving consumers a cheaper product they are being harmed. It's an interesting conundrum.
But it's not that they just gave consumers a cheaper product - they used their dominance in a specific market to gain dominance in another. It's the same thing as bundling Internet Explorer with Windows.
Bundling IE with Windows was never actually ruled to be illegal. The appeals court overturned the district court's initial ruling and remanded it for further analysis, but the case was ultimately settled before any ruling could be made.
Also, from the 2020 perspective Microsoft seems to have been right that the browser is an important operating system feature/component and may have simply been ahead of the curve in realizing it. (Today's mobile OSes all make the case that it should be a tightly OS managed component. Most consumers today would be extremely confused if an OS didn't include a browser at all; whether or not they primarily use that browser to install a more preferred browser.) It's easy in 2020 to wonder if the Microsoft anti-trust effort delayed innovations like PWA standards and got in the way of people thinking to build earlier cross-platform, lighter weight HTML "app frameworks" than what we are seeing in this timeline with Electron.
There is 0 reason why help and file browsing needs to be part of a browser. MS forced IE deep into the OS, when firefox and chrome, two incredibly successful and popular browsers do not need this at all, and are better for it.
Base FTP/Gopher/WebDAV "file browsing" was at the time definitely seen as a common browser feature. It was much lamented when Firefox dropped those features and left them to be plugins/external applications.
Most "help" is just webpages or ebooks today. All Microsoft did with "HTML Help" was essentially a very early version of EPUB.
I think these are very strange things to complain about.
Most "help" is just webpages or ebooks today. All Microsoft did with "HTML Help" was essentially a very early version of EPUB.
I think these are very strange things to complain about.
I tend to agree. I think if the case had continued in court, Microsoft would have won this particular argument.
(Of course, they still would have lost on the other claims involving more egregious behavior.)
(Of course, they still would have lost on the other claims involving more egregious behavior.)
I'm not sure about some of the other claims either.
The AntiVirus claims set Windows virus/malware safety back by like a decade. Needing to install Security Essentials into XP/Vista instead of it just being out-of-the-box probably cost a lot more dollars to Windows users than if the court had agreed that such security concerns were the domain of the operating system.
The PDF claims that Office shouldn't be allowed to directly export to PDF because that was the domain of paid add-ins also seem silly from 2020.
The AntiVirus claims set Windows virus/malware safety back by like a decade. Needing to install Security Essentials into XP/Vista instead of it just being out-of-the-box probably cost a lot more dollars to Windows users than if the court had agreed that such security concerns were the domain of the operating system.
The PDF claims that Office shouldn't be allowed to directly export to PDF because that was the domain of paid add-ins also seem silly from 2020.
The browser primarily exists to address Windows's deficiencies in smooth package management for installing basic apps - that is, for "downloading" basic "webpages" - by simply clicking on the link.
Counterfactual are hard, but if you see browsers as a sort of "replacement OS as desktop application" then you can see why more competition among OSes would result in the browser being LESS important, not more!
Counterfactual are hard, but if you see browsers as a sort of "replacement OS as desktop application" then you can see why more competition among OSes would result in the browser being LESS important, not more!
I find your viewpoint rather confusing and I'm not sure I see it at all. The browser primarily exists to traverse hyperlinked documents on the internet, which we call the "web". Though we've built plenty of "apps" now on top of hyperlinked documents, for the most part that remains arguably a secondary or tertiary reason for the browser to exist, and even if you could argue that secondary usage has rose to prominence to eclipse the primary reason for the existence of the browser, the use of the web for "apps" certainly has a lot less to do with Windows package management specifically and instead the convenience of simple, standardized client-server communications and development patterns that arise from that original primary usage goal of hyperlinked documents in a web of servers.
Web "apps" seem to only increase cross-platform interests, rather than serve to "smooth deficiencies" in a single platform.
> you can see why more competition among OSes would result in the browser being LESS important, not more!
We've seen exactly the opposite in practice: a ton of web "app" innovation occurred when there were a variety mobile "smartphone" OSes with reasonably modern browsers whereas development has shifted much further back to OS-specific apps as mobile devices have calcified into the iOS/Android duopoly.
Web "apps" seem to only increase cross-platform interests, rather than serve to "smooth deficiencies" in a single platform.
> you can see why more competition among OSes would result in the browser being LESS important, not more!
We've seen exactly the opposite in practice: a ton of web "app" innovation occurred when there were a variety mobile "smartphone" OSes with reasonably modern browsers whereas development has shifted much further back to OS-specific apps as mobile devices have calcified into the iOS/Android duopoly.
Or consider Chrome OS, which is not much else beyond a browser.
It’s hard to argue chat is a different market from office. IBM sold Lotus Notes with integrated IM (Sametime, iirc) 15 years ago.
Except that in this particular case the aren't "unrelated" markets: Office 365 is a bundle of (enterprise) Productivity Apps and Teams is an (enterprise) Productivity app.
We also know that from a technical perspective Teams actually was a "cheaper product" because it was built on the backs of other existing parts of Office 365. It shares a ton of backend with SharePoint and it swallowed up Skype for Business/Lync. Both key products of the "bundle" before Microsoft decided on a need to compete with Slack.
We also know that from a technical perspective Teams actually was a "cheaper product" because it was built on the backs of other existing parts of Office 365. It shares a ton of backend with SharePoint and it swallowed up Skype for Business/Lync. Both key products of the "bundle" before Microsoft decided on a need to compete with Slack.
Except that in this particular case the aren't "unrelated" markets: Office 365 is a bundle of (enterprise) Productivity Apps and Teams is an (enterprise) Productivity app.
You can expand the definition of "(enterprise) Productivity Apps" ad infinitum.
You can expand the definition of "(enterprise) Productivity Apps" ad infinitum.
Perhaps, but in this specific case:
1. Slack from a very early point in their pivot away from games branded themselves as an Enterprise Productivity app and made comparisons to Enterprise Email tools.
2. Microsoft's inclusion of Skype for Business/Lync (and to another extent Outlook, especially given Slack's own email-competitive marketing) for years prior to Slack/Teams implies that Chat/Communications has a long history of being considered an Enterprise Productivity App.
1. Slack from a very early point in their pivot away from games branded themselves as an Enterprise Productivity app and made comparisons to Enterprise Email tools.
2. Microsoft's inclusion of Skype for Business/Lync (and to another extent Outlook, especially given Slack's own email-competitive marketing) for years prior to Slack/Teams implies that Chat/Communications has a long history of being considered an Enterprise Productivity App.
> You can expand the definition of "(enterprise) Productivity Apps" ad infinitum.
Perhaps, but in the case of Teams you don't even have to stretch.
Perhaps, but in the case of Teams you don't even have to stretch.
Bundling is a legitimate market strategy and not inherently anti-competitive. So long as the overall package is not sold at a loss I don't think there's an issue.
There's room for independent apps in the face of a bundled solution. By focusing on one thing you can do it better and cheaper than the packaged solution. And indeed Slack, at least to many, was worth the extra money.
There's room for independent apps in the face of a bundled solution. By focusing on one thing you can do it better and cheaper than the packaged solution. And indeed Slack, at least to many, was worth the extra money.
Yeah, it is actually weird how these stories are getting written. By any sensible standard slack was insane success. Most founders dream about reaching market value of 1bln. Of course it would be cool to be worth 30bln and have control as well, but tbh many founders are insanely happy if they can get exit even for 30mln.
>Slack was perfectly capable of remaining a stand alone company.
It's possible that Slack's company insiders (founders, C-executives, investment bank advisors, etc) ... all concluded that continuing to compete as an independent company had a more risky outcome:
https://www.google.com/search?q=slack+not+profitable
In other words, let's give the benefit of the doubt and assume all those folks above are above-average intelligent and can use Excel spreadsheets to model user growth, revenue growth, expenses, new products in the pipeline, "what-if" scenarios, etc.
Also found a recent related HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24422092
EDIT REPLY to >"It seems like you stopped reading before my last sentence."
Yes, I read that but a healthy business needs to be an ongoing concern and _profitability_ is part of financial health. E.g. Blockbuster Video went from having a market cap worth billions to being worth nothing because of competition from Netflix. Blockbuster went from being profitable to losing money. In one way, Slack is even worse than Blockbuster as it has yet to turn a profit.
Setting your snark aside, what justifies your confidence about Slack's possible independent future more than the company's insiders who have all the internal metrics and private financial data to analyze?
It's possible that Slack's company insiders (founders, C-executives, investment bank advisors, etc) ... all concluded that continuing to compete as an independent company had a more risky outcome:
https://www.google.com/search?q=slack+not+profitable
In other words, let's give the benefit of the doubt and assume all those folks above are above-average intelligent and can use Excel spreadsheets to model user growth, revenue growth, expenses, new products in the pipeline, "what-if" scenarios, etc.
Also found a recent related HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24422092
EDIT REPLY to >"It seems like you stopped reading before my last sentence."
Yes, I read that but a healthy business needs to be an ongoing concern and _profitability_ is part of financial health. E.g. Blockbuster Video went from having a market cap worth billions to being worth nothing because of competition from Netflix. Blockbuster went from being profitable to losing money. In one way, Slack is even worse than Blockbuster as it has yet to turn a profit.
Setting your snark aside, what justifies your confidence about Slack's possible independent future more than the company's insiders who have all the internal metrics and private financial data to analyze?
https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/people-think-netflix-kill...
Heh, ironically, Blockbuster was almost never profitable either :)
Heh, ironically, Blockbuster was almost never profitable either :)
It seems like you stopped reading before my last sentence.
I completely agree, there is no way Slack becomes irrelevant due to Microsoft. Ironically, getting acquired might.
Slack has some pretty weird blind spots as a business, too, like that one where all your hundreds or tens-of-thousands of employees must be part of the same general chat channel, where anyone can ping the entire company.
> where anyone can ping the entire company.
It takes 5 seconds to change the permissions on that channel to restrict posting to admins only. We figured that out a few hours after rolling Slack out to a small subset of users to test.
It takes 5 seconds to change the permissions on that channel to restrict posting to admins only. We figured that out a few hours after rolling Slack out to a small subset of users to test.
Nobody has engineered a checkbox to disable that yet?
They have and it’s been an option for years now. (Disabling posting in #general)
They've been spending their their effort giving you their third version of a message-composition "block API" that still doesn't-quite-work as documented.
Is it so weird? Surely #general must be a holdover from IRC or some other pre-Slack messenger.
Me and my team use both, Slack and Teams, but only because Slack‘s video call feature is really poor compared to its competitor(s). I never really quite got why Slack dev was not able to at least close the gap to Teams in this area. The video call feature is still buggy and lacks important features, such as inviting externals (by calendar invite) or sharing screen AND video, not to mention a whiteboard. If Slack had been a bit more ambitious in this respect, Teams would never have been an option.
I can vouch that delivering quality, scaled, enterprise video conferencing is a much bigger technical challenge than it seems after, say, a weekend or two hacking with WebRTC in a hobby capacity. It combines the challenge of supporting a huge landscape of differing hardware devices with that of supporting a huge landscape of differing network environments. There's a near-infinite combination of corner cases that can cause problems and handling them poorly creates the impression of severe instability for the users who experience them. The nature of video conferencing/collaboration software means if 1 user's environment makes the experience unusable, the value for everyone who needs to collaborate with them is also seriously hampered.
That said, when we started dogfooding our own conferencing product it was partly because Slack consistently had issues dropping calls after 5-10m of group video. I'm kind of surprised to read such similar complaints 18 months+ on. Presumably it's harder to solve those problems at mass market global scales, we're pretty vertical specific.
That said, when we started dogfooding our own conferencing product it was partly because Slack consistently had issues dropping calls after 5-10m of group video. I'm kind of surprised to read such similar complaints 18 months+ on. Presumably it's harder to solve those problems at mass market global scales, we're pretty vertical specific.
Yes it must be very hard for one dude, but if anyone's in a position to make even just a decent version, it should be a billion dollar company who's core product is already pretty stable..
Don't forget the thousands/(millions) of companies who have enterprise contract for Office 365 and for which Teams comes for "free". Like the company I work for of hundreds of thousands of employees.
This is a good point. Office 365 seems to have a lot of free applications we don’t use (we tried teams 3 years ago...). They have a trello like thing and a file sharing like thing and a whole host of other stuff bundled in.
It's really beyond me how bad Slack's video feature is. If it worked well, most companies could leave behind Zoom.
I absolutely do not buy into the idea that "poor Slack" failed to "overcome giants" and that any harm was actually done.
$27bn is actually successful for a company that's just a few years old.
The competition that was stirred during those years ended up with Microsoft developing what is now a good product for 80% of use cases, with integration with tools (Office) that 80% of companies use, and all those companies benefitting from it did not have to shell out a single additional penny.
From the eyes of consumers, I would call it a success of competition rather than a failure. Sure, it has now run its course, but making $27bn out of it is not what I would call a bitter end - the dream of independence aside. But that's a for few individuals to dream about...
$27bn is actually successful for a company that's just a few years old.
The competition that was stirred during those years ended up with Microsoft developing what is now a good product for 80% of use cases, with integration with tools (Office) that 80% of companies use, and all those companies benefitting from it did not have to shell out a single additional penny.
From the eyes of consumers, I would call it a success of competition rather than a failure. Sure, it has now run its course, but making $27bn out of it is not what I would call a bitter end - the dream of independence aside. But that's a for few individuals to dream about...
I wish there were more well run 501.3c open source initiatives that relied on major donations from organizations wanting to diversify their risk to being forever beholden to major software providers.
E.g. if an O365 subscription costs your organization $10MM per year, why not donate $100k per year (along with 10 of your peers) to a group writing open source bare bones versions that handle 90% of your employee needs.
The world would seem to benefit in this model...
E.g. if an O365 subscription costs your organization $10MM per year, why not donate $100k per year (along with 10 of your peers) to a group writing open source bare bones versions that handle 90% of your employee needs.
The world would seem to benefit in this model...
The adage "nobody gets fired for choosing IBM" rings true here. Management at companies that pay $10MM per year on O365 don't see Office as a risk, they see it as foundational to their work. For that amount, they're probably also getting special deals from Microsoft to further integrate into their ecosystem and are constantly sold on all of the features that Microsoft products provide.
Ah, the Valve Proton model!
As the saying goes "If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem."
An organization that pays $10MM per year has a lot of leverage and likely has long term contracts to hedge risk. So why, basically, waste $100k?
An organization that pays $10MM per year has a lot of leverage and likely has long term contracts to hedge risk. So why, basically, waste $100k?
The world really would. I wish there was a way this could work and could pay the same salaries as FANGs do. I think you would like https://www.fsf.org/
If you look the reaction when Red Hat wanted to force the move from free CentOS clone to paid RHEL...
That incoming cash would help Linux get better.
Free though helps businesses start. Though economies of scale in tech are so huge now.
Free though helps businesses start. Though economies of scale in tech are so huge now.
This is speculation. It is not an interview with the decision makers at Slack.
It's an opinion piece.
We definitely could do a better job of "championing the little guy." But the title here -- which is not as click-baity as the actual title, is something I experienced as misleading. I expected this to be an interview with someone in the know, not speculation by an outsider based on previous public statements.
You can infer a lot based on public statements, but there may be things that weren't being said publicly. It can be impossible to know "the real motive" behind something without a direct statement by the person who made the decision.
It's an opinion piece.
We definitely could do a better job of "championing the little guy." But the title here -- which is not as click-baity as the actual title, is something I experienced as misleading. I expected this to be an interview with someone in the know, not speculation by an outsider based on previous public statements.
You can infer a lot based on public statements, but there may be things that weren't being said publicly. It can be impossible to know "the real motive" behind something without a direct statement by the person who made the decision.
The dark reality is NOT that people can't compete against monolithic companies.
It is that companies have tens of billions of dollars they can spend to acquire companies that are hundred-million-plus net-losers.
That lump sum of acquisition money could have been spent in significantly more meaningful ways.
It is that companies have tens of billions of dollars they can spend to acquire companies that are hundred-million-plus net-losers.
That lump sum of acquisition money could have been spent in significantly more meaningful ways.
It's classic malinvestment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malinvestment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malinvestment
"Our free market trades on the assumption that good, innovative products will prevail over less effective ones released by entrenched firms like Microsoft."
Wait, what? When did that start happening?
Wait, what? When did that start happening?
It COULD compete with tech giants, it COULDN'T live up to the valuation and had a fiduciary duty to take the offer.
Slack's worth $27bn (which is in the top 100 GDPs by country) and was FCF positive. With the right cap table it could stay private and self fund. But it went public, and by the rules of the game it chose to play ended up valued at like 30x forward revenue. To maintain that valuation it had to sell.
Slack's worth $27bn (which is in the top 100 GDPs by country) and was FCF positive. With the right cap table it could stay private and self fund. But it went public, and by the rules of the game it chose to play ended up valued at like 30x forward revenue. To maintain that valuation it had to sell.
Yeah, while I agree with the article overall Slack is a bad example to use. It sold not because it was on its last legs but because Salesforce made an absurd offer. There are plenty of smaller companies that die or get acquired because they have no other choice.
> “How will you compete with the tech giants?
The one and only thing people who are concerned with the tech giants should be talking about is ending #ImaginaryPropertyLaws.
Anyone talking about problems with big tech but not talking about ending IP Laws are just paying lip service.
I worked at Microsoft. Great and brilliant people. They don't need #ImaginaryProperty protection. End that and sure, shareholders of MSFT will be worse off, but the world will be better off—a ton of people there will go off and start their own companies and there will be a lot more competition in the space.
Same for Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, etc. All of these companies rely on #ImaginaryPropertyLaws for the root of their power. Such laws are just plain wrong (we could enable every child on earth to have the same access to information as the richest with a snap of our fingers, but everyday we choose not to), but putting all that aside, if all you care about is ending the monopolization going on in the tech industry, this is the thing you should be looking hard at.
The one and only thing people who are concerned with the tech giants should be talking about is ending #ImaginaryPropertyLaws.
Anyone talking about problems with big tech but not talking about ending IP Laws are just paying lip service.
I worked at Microsoft. Great and brilliant people. They don't need #ImaginaryProperty protection. End that and sure, shareholders of MSFT will be worse off, but the world will be better off—a ton of people there will go off and start their own companies and there will be a lot more competition in the space.
Same for Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, etc. All of these companies rely on #ImaginaryPropertyLaws for the root of their power. Such laws are just plain wrong (we could enable every child on earth to have the same access to information as the richest with a snap of our fingers, but everyday we choose not to), but putting all that aside, if all you care about is ending the monopolization going on in the tech industry, this is the thing you should be looking hard at.
IP laws are a negligible factor in the dominance of tech giants. When was the last time Google or Facebook sued a startup for violating one of its patents? It's far easier to just buy them out.
It goes far deeper than that.
These companies have absurd amounts of proprietary information on everything going on in the world, and it's near impossible to compete. You are right, they will generally just buy you out, but if you don't accept, they will buy out your competitor and then your competitor will suddenly have access to all your customers (and many more), your potential customers, your usage numbers, data on your employees, your financings, et cetera.
It's not a fair fight, and it is the way it is because of ImaginaryProperty laws.
These companies have absurd amounts of proprietary information on everything going on in the world, and it's near impossible to compete. You are right, they will generally just buy you out, but if you don't accept, they will buy out your competitor and then your competitor will suddenly have access to all your customers (and many more), your potential customers, your usage numbers, data on your employees, your financings, et cetera.
It's not a fair fight, and it is the way it is because of ImaginaryProperty laws.
Slack missed the opportunity to add video communication and replace webex. They somehow didn't take that next step after conquering chat. I thought with video + enterprise integration they would have become the de facto tool for all collaboration. I guess that is still there on the cards for them. Instead they left that door open for Microsoft to add Teams.
Would have love to see ZM and WORK merging, maybe in a parallel reality.
My current employer is the first company I work at that uses Slack. I used to envy my partner who raves about Slack. However, when I start using it, I wasn’t too impressed. I worked for a Chinese company in my last role, and I have to say I love their internal chat tool (which is a copycat of WeChat) way better than Slack. It doesn’t have the cool and modern interface of Slack, but it’s way more functional. For example, my favorite feature of the WeChat copycat tool is taking screenshots and able to do sketches on the screenshots. It’s integrated within the chat tool and it’s so convenient. With Slack, I have to rely on my Mac’s screenshot feature and Preview for editing, and then drag it in Slack’s chat window. Also, for shared channel, I saw that was innovated by WeChat long time ago, so I wasn’t that impressed with that feature.
With the current tech atmosphere, so many people want to call Facebook, Google, and Apple monopolies and Microsoft sort of gets forgotten. Microsoft still has a ton of levers they can pull to influence buyers.
Microsoft has the ability to include teams as part of a bigger integrated bundle which businesses find more appealing.
Microsoft has the ability to include teams as part of a bigger integrated bundle which businesses find more appealing.
It's because MS have had their run from >10 years ago, and now act less like they used to. Certainly not zero, but certainly nowhere near the F/G/A realms of monopoly and cartel like behavior that we see today.
> Our free market trades on the assumption that good, innovative products will prevail over less effective ones released by entrenched firms like Microsoft.
What a bizarre statement. The only think the free market assumes is that the market decides. Nothing else.
What a bizarre statement. The only think the free market assumes is that the market decides. Nothing else.
In Slack's case I'm not sure how much this played a role. Slack itself really seemed like the kind of project a team of developers could write at a one week hackathon. So of course Slack was going to have to compete with essentially clones from all the major vendors and more, it's a very cloneable piece of software.
At least something like Zoom seems to not be as easily cloneable (the alternatives don't compare yet, in my opinion at least).
At least something like Zoom seems to not be as easily cloneable (the alternatives don't compare yet, in my opinion at least).
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IMHO, we all want to live in the "ever after". I think that's why many successful startups (or startup-like companies) get sold by their founders to mega-corps.
The existence and seemingly never-ending expansion of mega-corps is a different story though.
The existence and seemingly never-ending expansion of mega-corps is a different story though.
Well Microsoft teams is free if you already have office 365 so of course it's now one of the most used systems.
I wish calls had native support for Apple pencil as I'd like to use my iPad to draw on screen or a board during meetings
I wish calls had native support for Apple pencil as I'd like to use my iPad to draw on screen or a board during meetings
"it’s time to rebalance the playing field"
OK sure, but the author doesn't say how. She's involved in a whole bunch of initiatives to help the little guy, so surely she has a lot of experience to share?
OK sure, but the author doesn't say how. She's involved in a whole bunch of initiatives to help the little guy, so surely she has a lot of experience to share?
Eliminating market advantages for incumbents and wealthy seems to me to be obviously in society's interest: It creates a more competitive marketplace for consumers, reducing prices and increasing innovation, it creates more opportunity for innovators, and it's fundamentally more fair - a meritocracy. I think it should be aggressively pursued, but very carefully - we don't want replace one distortion and unfair system with another.
Painting my impressions with a very broad brush: It seems that capitalism was formerly sold to the public as good for society: It provided economic growth, opportunity, and fairness. Those were the goals, and where there were market failures (such as monopolies or prejudice), society would step in and correct it, to further those goals. Now capitalism itself seems to be the goal, the religion, the ideology. It serves no higher purpose - the highest purpose effectively becomes the capitalists. If society steps in, it's rejected as a perversion of capitalism.
Painting my impressions with a very broad brush: It seems that capitalism was formerly sold to the public as good for society: It provided economic growth, opportunity, and fairness. Those were the goals, and where there were market failures (such as monopolies or prejudice), society would step in and correct it, to further those goals. Now capitalism itself seems to be the goal, the religion, the ideology. It serves no higher purpose - the highest purpose effectively becomes the capitalists. If society steps in, it's rejected as a perversion of capitalism.
Lets say im a current Teams user. If you write a law that forces Microsoft to make me start paying for teams, who are you helping? Me, the consumer? No, you're bailing out Slack using my wallet.
That's not pro-consumer. That's anti-consumer. It makes me poorer and both Microsoft and Slack richer.
That's not pro-consumer. That's anti-consumer. It makes me poorer and both Microsoft and Slack richer.
Monopoly abuse doesn't lower prices for the consumer; it reduces innovation and raises prices. It's only 'bailing out' Slack if you accept that abusive monopoly practices as a norm, in which case arresting thieves who steal and sell goods is 'bailing out' the jewelry stores.
Enterprise guys can bundle solutions together. Slack can't.
Example: Atlassian can bundle Jira, Confluence, Hipchat.
Microsoft can bundle Office 365, Exchange, Teams, etc.
Example: Atlassian can bundle Jira, Confluence, Hipchat.
Microsoft can bundle Office 365, Exchange, Teams, etc.
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Honestly, I wouldn’t mind if Salesforce manages to kill Slack; I’ve come to hate it over the years.
Curious, why?
Slack was supposed to save us from email. It actually made things worse on its own, and email never went away either. Slack has turned into an unrelenting firehose of noise and distraction, and it lacks the tooling necessary to make it actually serve all the roles it fills in most orgs.
Something slower, more purpose built, with a much richer set of controls around notification processing (read/unread isn’t enough when it’s a work ask) would serve us all much better.
Something slower, more purpose built, with a much richer set of controls around notification processing (read/unread isn’t enough when it’s a work ask) would serve us all much better.
> And if a company like Slack can’t stand up to the consolidation of corporate power, consumers’ ability to freely choose the best and most useful product is at risk
That is the flawed assumption. Consumers never had a choice for Slack. It was an enterprise decision
That is the flawed assumption. Consumers never had a choice for Slack. It was an enterprise decision
J.R. "Bob" Dobbs is not amused.
Doesn’t everyone want to stay independent?
Wait, so Slack has single-digit million users and sold for $27 billion?
I like the feature on slack where you can see a graph of private vs public discussions. If the private discussions suddenly increase dramatically while public discussion cease and you aren't involved, something bad is about to happen
Companies should not be allowed to buy other companies unless it is absolutely essential. This is a flaw in capitalism that creates duopolies and hurts consumers.
We then get companies that are too big to fail, can afford creative accounting and plethora of other not so nice things, like lobbying government to change legislation in favour of them.
We also need a rule that once company goes over a certain threshold it should be split.
I don't think we have ever experienced something like this before that's why there is no regulation and we can see from our experience that companies do not behave nice, so we need a law that forces them to behave.
Slack sold because they are not the future, the future of work is video. the pandemic showed that zoom, hangouts, team is much valuable than chat. Those all have chat as well, might not be as good as Slack but if any org had to keep one, it would not be Slack.
I very strongly disagree. Even in a physical workplace, quick text messaging has a place. Saying that the video services are more valuable than chat is comparing apples to oranges. And I don't know of a mainstream video conferencing service with text messaging as good as Slack. (Maybe Teams? I was strongly encouraged to used it over the previous option that worked fine, and have intentionally avoided it since out of protest.)
> As Matt Stoller notes in his newsletter “BIG“, Microsoft has a track record of giving “away its new product for no or low cost to existing clients, and [bundling] it with existing product lines. In a society with functional antitrust laws, such activity would be illegal.”
That's ridiculous. According to that logic, neither Office (nor Google Workspace, formerly G Suite) should be allowed to exist -- you'd be forced to buy Word, Excel, and PowerPoint all separately.
Or by the same logic, an OS shouldn't be allowed to have any applications at all -- not even a calculator app, because that would be anticompetitive against other calculator apps.
In what universe should Microsoft not be allowed to add a chat component to their office productivity suite? When that's clearly an essential component of such suites these days? Sheesh.
Slack has had an amazing outcome. And awesome products, historically, tend to be absorbed by large corporations simply because it's more efficient and therefore profitable for everyone involved. There's nothing wrong with that.
That's ridiculous. According to that logic, neither Office (nor Google Workspace, formerly G Suite) should be allowed to exist -- you'd be forced to buy Word, Excel, and PowerPoint all separately.
Or by the same logic, an OS shouldn't be allowed to have any applications at all -- not even a calculator app, because that would be anticompetitive against other calculator apps.
In what universe should Microsoft not be allowed to add a chat component to their office productivity suite? When that's clearly an essential component of such suites these days? Sheesh.
Slack has had an amazing outcome. And awesome products, historically, tend to be absorbed by large corporations simply because it's more efficient and therefore profitable for everyone involved. There's nothing wrong with that.
The purpose of antitrust laws is to limit how much damage powerful companies can do.
So yes, if we had functional antitrust laws in the US, Microsoft may not be allowed to do certain things. Like bundle a Slack competitor with an existing product.
The universe where this should happen is one where we recognize that a healthy capitalistic society is good, and putting constraints on concentrated power helps keep things healthy.
The real question behind all this is: are we as a society better or worse off now that Salesforce owns Slack?
So yes, if we had functional antitrust laws in the US, Microsoft may not be allowed to do certain things. Like bundle a Slack competitor with an existing product.
The universe where this should happen is one where we recognize that a healthy capitalistic society is good, and putting constraints on concentrated power helps keep things healthy.
The real question behind all this is: are we as a society better or worse off now that Salesforce owns Slack?
> That's ridiculous. According to that logic, neither Office (nor Google Workspace, formerly G Suite) should be allowed to exist
It's not that they should not be allowed to exist. Rather, they should not be able to undercut competitors by using their leverage as massive tech companies to subsidize losing money on something while they starve out competitors. Stoller's article has much more nuance than you are attributing, and he outlines that in a world where these tech corporations were not allowed to get as big and powerful, you wouldn't have to be left with binary decisions like this one.
This sort of behavior is akin to Amazon selling items at a loss in order to starve out some competitor and then buying them out afterwards in order to benefit from their infrastructure and logistics.
It's not that they should not be allowed to exist. Rather, they should not be able to undercut competitors by using their leverage as massive tech companies to subsidize losing money on something while they starve out competitors. Stoller's article has much more nuance than you are attributing, and he outlines that in a world where these tech corporations were not allowed to get as big and powerful, you wouldn't have to be left with binary decisions like this one.
This sort of behavior is akin to Amazon selling items at a loss in order to starve out some competitor and then buying them out afterwards in order to benefit from their infrastructure and logistics.
I read his article, and unfortunately his nuance essentially comes down to:
> The loss of an independent Slack is sad, because Slack’s strategy wasn’t just a standard attempt to gain market power. As a company, Slack’s team thought carefully about product design, and that care showed.
That's not an economic argument, it's an aesthetic one.
The fact is, it's natural in many industries to coalesce around 2-3 major competitors. And as we can see, that's exactly what's happening here. Slack isn't being snuffed out. It's living on as part of one of the ~3 major players in the space, which is a natural and desirable outcome for consumers who want simple bundled all-in-one solutions.
And Microsoft hasn't been "losing money" by including chat functionality in Office -- what you're describing is predatory pricing which is simply not the case here. Office is an expensive product that companies pay tons of $$$ for.
> The loss of an independent Slack is sad, because Slack’s strategy wasn’t just a standard attempt to gain market power. As a company, Slack’s team thought carefully about product design, and that care showed.
That's not an economic argument, it's an aesthetic one.
The fact is, it's natural in many industries to coalesce around 2-3 major competitors. And as we can see, that's exactly what's happening here. Slack isn't being snuffed out. It's living on as part of one of the ~3 major players in the space, which is a natural and desirable outcome for consumers who want simple bundled all-in-one solutions.
And Microsoft hasn't been "losing money" by including chat functionality in Office -- what you're describing is predatory pricing which is simply not the case here. Office is an expensive product that companies pay tons of $$$ for.
How is it “natural” for many industries to coalesce into oligopoly? This requires a legal system with strong property rights for corporations and lax competition law enforcement. These conditions have not always existed. You can argue that the status quo is welfare-optimising, but I don’t see what’s natural about it.
Coalescing into 2-3 major competitors is natural in the sense that consumers can't, and don't want to, keep track of 10 or 20 different choices for the same thing. It's just too much. It's the paradox of choice.
There's nothing inherently wrong with "oligopolies" except when they collude together to raise prices, and competition is weak. But that's obviously not the case in office productivity software -- competition and innovation are intense, and there's zero evidence of price-gouging whatsoever.
There's nothing inherently wrong with "oligopolies" except when they collude together to raise prices, and competition is weak. But that's obviously not the case in office productivity software -- competition and innovation are intense, and there's zero evidence of price-gouging whatsoever.
For a small/medium sized business trying to optimize expenses, Microsoft can gain a competitive edge simply off having teams “bundled” into it’s offering, without actually being a superior product.
If your argument is that there is a tendency towards monopoly and that’s just the way of thing, even in a “free market capitalist” economy which is based largely on the idea of competition, then I don’t find it convincing.
Consumers end up with bundled solutions with 2-3 companies precisely because those companies take steps to make that the outcome (eg Apple making integration sub-par when it is not first party)
If your argument is that there is a tendency towards monopoly and that’s just the way of thing, even in a “free market capitalist” economy which is based largely on the idea of competition, then I don’t find it convincing.
Consumers end up with bundled solutions with 2-3 companies precisely because those companies take steps to make that the outcome (eg Apple making integration sub-par when it is not first party)
> you'd be forced to buy Word, Excel, and PowerPoint all separately.
You can already do just that. What's the problem with that?
You can already do just that. What's the problem with that?
> That's ridiculous.
It's ridiculous that you think it's ridiculous. No, I don't think Office should exist. If Microsoft had been forced to sell Word separately from Excel, we might all still have a choice to run Lotus123, or QuattroPro. There's nothing enshrined in the Constitution that says that companies have to be allowed to bundle whatever they want into their other products. I think it's the job of our government, in fact, to prevent it this sort of thing. Microsoft bought lots of companies during the 90's (good for them!), but ran a least a dozen more -- and prominent ones, at that -- out of the market by duplicating their software, and absorbing their business. Yes! Absolutely! Microsoft can make their own disk defragmentation product. Or antivirus. Or whatever. But put a price tag on it, even if it's $0, and let it compete with everything else that's already in the market. Don't bundle it. I mean, did the browser wars teach us nothing?
It's ridiculous that you think it's ridiculous. No, I don't think Office should exist. If Microsoft had been forced to sell Word separately from Excel, we might all still have a choice to run Lotus123, or QuattroPro. There's nothing enshrined in the Constitution that says that companies have to be allowed to bundle whatever they want into their other products. I think it's the job of our government, in fact, to prevent it this sort of thing. Microsoft bought lots of companies during the 90's (good for them!), but ran a least a dozen more -- and prominent ones, at that -- out of the market by duplicating their software, and absorbing their business. Yes! Absolutely! Microsoft can make their own disk defragmentation product. Or antivirus. Or whatever. But put a price tag on it, even if it's $0, and let it compete with everything else that's already in the market. Don't bundle it. I mean, did the browser wars teach us nothing?
But then where does it end?
Why should Word be allowed to bundle a spell-checker? Why shouldn't you have to buy that separately?
And why should the spell-checker be allowed to bundle a dictionary? Shouldn't that have to come from a separate company?
Should Photoshop be allowed to bundle a set of default filters, when there are companies that produce third-party filters? Should macOS be allowed to bundle ZIP compression, when there are companies that sell standalone compression software?
You're right we don't have Lotus 123. But we have Google Sheets, and we have Tableau, and we have Jupyter notebooks.
Literally every product is bundle of things that were combined into it, until you get either to raw physical materials or perhaps single functions in code.
I don't know how you're going to come up with a standard that allows Macs to include a menu option to compress a folder, but doesn't allow a bundle of Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
Why should Word be allowed to bundle a spell-checker? Why shouldn't you have to buy that separately?
And why should the spell-checker be allowed to bundle a dictionary? Shouldn't that have to come from a separate company?
Should Photoshop be allowed to bundle a set of default filters, when there are companies that produce third-party filters? Should macOS be allowed to bundle ZIP compression, when there are companies that sell standalone compression software?
You're right we don't have Lotus 123. But we have Google Sheets, and we have Tableau, and we have Jupyter notebooks.
Literally every product is bundle of things that were combined into it, until you get either to raw physical materials or perhaps single functions in code.
I don't know how you're going to come up with a standard that allows Macs to include a menu option to compress a folder, but doesn't allow a bundle of Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
You’re operating on two fallacies (slippery slope and a strawman). I think there’s a pretty clear distinction between having a spell-checker bundled into word, and reproducing the product of a competitor after the fact and bundling it into your office suite as an accessory.
Also, that’s the whole point of the legal system (and part of what Stoller is arguing). If a spell-checker company feels the behavior was anti-competitive, they should be able to go through the legal system and fight it. I think Stoller is saying that this exact legal system is currently flawed.
Also, that’s the whole point of the legal system (and part of what Stoller is arguing). If a spell-checker company feels the behavior was anti-competitive, they should be able to go through the legal system and fight it. I think Stoller is saying that this exact legal system is currently flawed.
I'm not operating on any fallacies at all.
First of all, it's not a straw man. Spellcheckers were standalone applications for years before word processors began integrating them. [1]
And second, it's not a slippery slope fallacy, it's an actual slippery slope, that's the whole point. There isn't a "pretty clear distinction" at all.
If I understand you correctly, you're arguing that when spellcheckers came out, the existing products should have been able to legally prevent WordPerfect (and eventually Word, and Docs, etc.) from ever building their own integrated spellcheckers. To this day, you'd need to buy Word, and then buy a separate spellchecking app or extension.
But there's no distinction between spellchecking and 100 other features that Word has that also used to be separate programs -- like mail merge, like drawing capabilities, like a citations manager, etc. etc. etc.
And you really think that would be a good idea?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spell_checker#History
First of all, it's not a straw man. Spellcheckers were standalone applications for years before word processors began integrating them. [1]
And second, it's not a slippery slope fallacy, it's an actual slippery slope, that's the whole point. There isn't a "pretty clear distinction" at all.
If I understand you correctly, you're arguing that when spellcheckers came out, the existing products should have been able to legally prevent WordPerfect (and eventually Word, and Docs, etc.) from ever building their own integrated spellcheckers. To this day, you'd need to buy Word, and then buy a separate spellchecking app or extension.
But there's no distinction between spellchecking and 100 other features that Word has that also used to be separate programs -- like mail merge, like drawing capabilities, like a citations manager, etc. etc. etc.
And you really think that would be a good idea?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spell_checker#History
> I think there’s a pretty clear distinction between having a spell-checker bundled into word, and reproducing the product of a competitor after the fact and bundling it into your office suite as an accessory.
I'm not seeing a clear distinction. Imagine a scenario where Word and Excel aren't bundled. Word has always had table functionality. The Word team decides that it'd be useful if, when creating a table, end user is able to enter @cell1 + 1 to cell two to make it show the incremental value of cell one. Soon enough they'll add sort, sum, average. Then they'll create a template that creates a document with a table created by default, which looks like a spreadsheet.
Should those new functionality be allowed and who get to decide? Any attempt to regulate such product features are futile and inevitably stifle innovation.
Apple M1 is universally praised exactly because it's a SOC with integrated functions that used to require dedicated chips from multiple vendors. Imagine the inferior product if Apple is legally obliged to use Intel/AMD graphic card, in the name of maintaining the competitive landscape?
I'm not seeing a clear distinction. Imagine a scenario where Word and Excel aren't bundled. Word has always had table functionality. The Word team decides that it'd be useful if, when creating a table, end user is able to enter @cell1 + 1 to cell two to make it show the incremental value of cell one. Soon enough they'll add sort, sum, average. Then they'll create a template that creates a document with a table created by default, which looks like a spreadsheet.
Should those new functionality be allowed and who get to decide? Any attempt to regulate such product features are futile and inevitably stifle innovation.
Apple M1 is universally praised exactly because it's a SOC with integrated functions that used to require dedicated chips from multiple vendors. Imagine the inferior product if Apple is legally obliged to use Intel/AMD graphic card, in the name of maintaining the competitive landscape?
> These giants, armed with nearly limitless funds and extensive client relationships, frequently abuse their advantage and bully smaller upstarts into oblivion.
I don’t really understand this viewpoint. Companies are _choosing_ to use Microsoft’s products for various reasons. Maybe they already use Office and the integration with Teams made Teams the best choice over Slack. Maybe the company had an existing relationship with Microsoft so onboarding Teams required less Administrative overhead. There are probably many more that I am not listing. These are legitimate reasons to choose a product over another, not Microsoft abusing its power.
Generally, big companies are only capable of delivering this type of value, and I don’t really see why that’s a problem. Lone, un-integrated startups, like Slack, still pop up and shake up the market. Then big companies replicate their product and integrate it into their existing software suites and sales pipelines, providing value that the smaller startup cannot. In this case the smaller startup merged with a larger company and will likely be integrated with their systems, providing value that both companies could have easily created alone. This all seems like it’s working as intended to me.
I don’t really understand this viewpoint. Companies are _choosing_ to use Microsoft’s products for various reasons. Maybe they already use Office and the integration with Teams made Teams the best choice over Slack. Maybe the company had an existing relationship with Microsoft so onboarding Teams required less Administrative overhead. There are probably many more that I am not listing. These are legitimate reasons to choose a product over another, not Microsoft abusing its power.
Generally, big companies are only capable of delivering this type of value, and I don’t really see why that’s a problem. Lone, un-integrated startups, like Slack, still pop up and shake up the market. Then big companies replicate their product and integrate it into their existing software suites and sales pipelines, providing value that the smaller startup cannot. In this case the smaller startup merged with a larger company and will likely be integrated with their systems, providing value that both companies could have easily created alone. This all seems like it’s working as intended to me.
>Generally, big companies are only capable of delivering this type of value, and I don’t really see why that’s a problem
It's a chat app. (And Slack itself is a huge company) Teams, as a product on its own merits, is not necessarily better than Slack. I very strongly disagree with the notion that integration into a locked-in ecosystem is a legitimate reason and not an abuse of power.
When you switch from product A to product B only because product B integrates with proprietary protocols or services you rely on and not on the merit or price of the product itself then that's bad, and it's harming consumer welfare and competition. It also is a positive feedback loop in that those services just keep claiming more and more space and the claim of space alone diminishes the value of everyone else, because you're forever locked into a web of, in this case, Microsoft products. Which is of course one of the reasons the company is so powerful.
You can ask yourself this, if every software company waas forced to implement transparent protocols and APIs, so that clients can freely choose their end-user software, what would the market share look like? If it would look different than it does now I think you can make a strong case that consumers are being deprived of choice.
It's a chat app. (And Slack itself is a huge company) Teams, as a product on its own merits, is not necessarily better than Slack. I very strongly disagree with the notion that integration into a locked-in ecosystem is a legitimate reason and not an abuse of power.
When you switch from product A to product B only because product B integrates with proprietary protocols or services you rely on and not on the merit or price of the product itself then that's bad, and it's harming consumer welfare and competition. It also is a positive feedback loop in that those services just keep claiming more and more space and the claim of space alone diminishes the value of everyone else, because you're forever locked into a web of, in this case, Microsoft products. Which is of course one of the reasons the company is so powerful.
You can ask yourself this, if every software company waas forced to implement transparent protocols and APIs, so that clients can freely choose their end-user software, what would the market share look like? If it would look different than it does now I think you can make a strong case that consumers are being deprived of choice.
> It's a chat app
I think you are reducing my argument a little here. I mentioned in my previous comment there are other benefits to working with large b2b companies other than the raw merits of a single provided app by itself.
> I very strongly disagree with the notion that integration into a locked-in ecosystem is a legitimate reason and not an abuse of power.
I disagree with you here. There are many legitimate business (and personal) reasons to stick with an ecosystem. If that wasn't the case, then people wouldn't pick those products. Open standards with interchangeable clients and servers do exist right now, IRC for example, though nobody uses them because companies like Microsoft provide a hosted solution that provides more value.
> You can ask yourself this, if every software company waas forced to implement transparent protocols and APIs, so that clients can freely choose their end-user software, what would the market share look like? If it would look different than it does now I think you can make a strong case that consumers are being deprived of choice.
This would be nice but I don't really think things would change that much. As I mentioned above, open standards already exist. We have email protocols, IRC, RTF, LaTeX, etc and people don't use them (with the exception of email). Forcing companies to open their APIs wouldn't force them to integrate with each other and, if they did, imagine being Slack in a world where Google, Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, etc all had different APIs you had to integrate with and their products were already integrated with each other? That would be pretty expensive to implement and maintain and would definitively put you at a disadvantage due to your relative lack of resources.
Also, if all APIs were forced to be transparent, companies would still be able to build ecosystems that are more comprehensive and desirable than a patched-together set of disparate clients and hosts setup by some IT admin. A company which does one thing well, even if compatible with all other, like services (which would be an incredible feat) would never be able to ensure that their product would integrate better into every major company's ecosystem, putting them at the same disadvantage.
Additionally, there is real value with consolidating your software services under one company. You only have to manage one account, you might get a better deal because you are buying multiple services at the same time, all support would be centralized and bundled with other services you are buying.
I think you are reducing my argument a little here. I mentioned in my previous comment there are other benefits to working with large b2b companies other than the raw merits of a single provided app by itself.
> I very strongly disagree with the notion that integration into a locked-in ecosystem is a legitimate reason and not an abuse of power.
I disagree with you here. There are many legitimate business (and personal) reasons to stick with an ecosystem. If that wasn't the case, then people wouldn't pick those products. Open standards with interchangeable clients and servers do exist right now, IRC for example, though nobody uses them because companies like Microsoft provide a hosted solution that provides more value.
> You can ask yourself this, if every software company waas forced to implement transparent protocols and APIs, so that clients can freely choose their end-user software, what would the market share look like? If it would look different than it does now I think you can make a strong case that consumers are being deprived of choice.
This would be nice but I don't really think things would change that much. As I mentioned above, open standards already exist. We have email protocols, IRC, RTF, LaTeX, etc and people don't use them (with the exception of email). Forcing companies to open their APIs wouldn't force them to integrate with each other and, if they did, imagine being Slack in a world where Google, Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, etc all had different APIs you had to integrate with and their products were already integrated with each other? That would be pretty expensive to implement and maintain and would definitively put you at a disadvantage due to your relative lack of resources.
Also, if all APIs were forced to be transparent, companies would still be able to build ecosystems that are more comprehensive and desirable than a patched-together set of disparate clients and hosts setup by some IT admin. A company which does one thing well, even if compatible with all other, like services (which would be an incredible feat) would never be able to ensure that their product would integrate better into every major company's ecosystem, putting them at the same disadvantage.
Additionally, there is real value with consolidating your software services under one company. You only have to manage one account, you might get a better deal because you are buying multiple services at the same time, all support would be centralized and bundled with other services you are buying.
> imagine being Slack in a world where Google, Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, etc all had different APIs you had to integrate with and their products were already integrated with each other?
That's already the world we're in except for the fact that small competitors can't integrate with them, or reimplement clients even if they want to. Netflix runs fine on every platform of the large players. I can log into everything with Google, Facebook and vice-versa, the very largest companies often already adjust their infrastructure to be mutually compatible to significant degrees.
It's really only third party incumbents who get locked out regularly, if you're already an Apple or Microsoft you can at least partially get your way with the other big sharks. It's the Signals and IRCs and (until recently) Linuxes of this world who have to exist at the margins.
I also think it's important to point out that nobody has to fully reimplement a services API. If you're one guy, and you want to make a sleek, minimialist facebook client, why not? If people prefer full featured Facebook they can go to Facebook, but at least then there is choice. I wasn't saying either that a company can't have huge market share in this system, just that they ought to do it on the merit of their software, facing full competition. Large companies that provide feature-rich experiences will still win customers who desire these features, so I don't see the downside to my proposal.
That's already the world we're in except for the fact that small competitors can't integrate with them, or reimplement clients even if they want to. Netflix runs fine on every platform of the large players. I can log into everything with Google, Facebook and vice-versa, the very largest companies often already adjust their infrastructure to be mutually compatible to significant degrees.
It's really only third party incumbents who get locked out regularly, if you're already an Apple or Microsoft you can at least partially get your way with the other big sharks. It's the Signals and IRCs and (until recently) Linuxes of this world who have to exist at the margins.
I also think it's important to point out that nobody has to fully reimplement a services API. If you're one guy, and you want to make a sleek, minimialist facebook client, why not? If people prefer full featured Facebook they can go to Facebook, but at least then there is choice. I wasn't saying either that a company can't have huge market share in this system, just that they ought to do it on the merit of their software, facing full competition. Large companies that provide feature-rich experiences will still win customers who desire these features, so I don't see the downside to my proposal.
I think I agree with everything you are saying here. I think things would be better if APIs were open and people could write their own clients in most--if not all circumstances, I just don't think open APIs would fundamentally change the influence of large companies or diminish the advantages their ecosystems have for most businesses and consumers
> When you switch from product A to product B only because product B integrates with proprietary protocols or services you rely on and not on the merit or price of the product itself then that's bad, and it's harming consumer welfare and competition.
Slack could have integrated with LibreOffice Online and ownCloud. They chose not to.
Slack could have integrated with LibreOffice Online and ownCloud. They chose not to.
Innovations that could have carried the company further could be digital whiteboarding, google docs like editing, dropbox style storage, squiggle like remote teams collaboration.
Also the atlassian merger via hip-chat sunset could have resulted a stronger integration between the two organizations.
Screen hero was innovative and it looks like the control aspect of things got abandoned