Comment by blahblah12 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blahblah12 | Hacker News Reader

It's not really killed. The original Sunrise, Accompli and Wunderlist teams still work at MSFT and they're working on their new apps respectively (Javier runs all of Outlook now). And Chad Fowler (former CTO of Wunderlist), and company are behind the pivot to To-Do. It's the exact same application. I've been beta testing it and it just has few additional features that will show up over time. It's really just a rebrand and a skin and a new backend they're trying to rapidly improve.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/fowlerchad/ - CTO Wunderlist https://www.linkedin.com/in/jsoltero/ - Accompli founder https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianreber/ - Wunderlist Founder https://www.linkedin.com/in/pierrevalade/ - founder Sunrise https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremylv/ - founder Sunrise/Design

They all got promoted really quickly and have large portfolios (including their original apps and teams) , but now with a mandate to fix the other similar core applications, too. If anything, this crop of teams and ppl now run huge portions of Office -- not the other way around. And they're the ones deciding strategic vision.

These acquisitions were also acquihires. The CEOs/CTOs have high leadership positions now (they went from Partner GEMs -> CTO/CVPs in about a year or so) and are trying to make all of Office better.

I think every time a MSFT article comes up, ppl get in an uproar. Give the company a chance and check your bias at the door.

“This, milord, is my family's axe. We have owned it for almost nine hundred years, see. Of course, sometimes it needed a new blade. And sometimes it has required a new handle, new designs on the metalwork, a little refreshing of the ornamentation . . . but is this not the nine hundred-year-old axe of my family? And because it has changed gently over time, it is still a pretty good axe, y'know. Pretty good.”

That's what I thought of when you said it's just a rebrand and a skin with a new back end. I mean lets call it what it is, a new app by the wunderlist team that's more oriented towards integration with Microsoft's existing suite of products. So yeah, Wunderlist is dead. Long live its spiritual successor.

I'm not convinced this is MSFT specific, and I do appreciate your optimism about the team (your team?) and what it is doing.

Taken as a whole, these sort of acquisitions/acquihires have not tended to go well for the users of the smaller teams original products. One can argue that their is or is not a net win, of course - but if you are a user of a service like this and really like it, chances are pretty good you aren't going to like what company X does with it after acquisition. Given that, it's pretty unremarkable to hear people say "so much for service X, now A has bought them". On the whole, they are mostly right. Sometimes you get an nice service Y out of it though! Often not a great replacement for the original, but nice nonetheless.

How can I give them a chance when they kill the crucial functionality of the app that I liked?

For example, I was a heavy Sunrise user. It worked wonderfully on syncing all of my calendars and showing them all to me in one nice feed with a slick interface. I didn't have to sync my various calendars to one central service and feed all of my calendars to one company. It synced them all to my smartphone, which was a feature I was looking for. Giving all my calendars over to Microsoft... no, thank you.

As someone who works closely with these teams within Microsoft, I can say that these team members are having a huge, positive impact on the Office division.

can you elaborate more?

"It's really just a rebrand and a skin and a new backend they're trying to rapidly improve." Didn't they do the same thing with Skype?

> If anything, this crop of teams and ppl now run huge portions of Office

Thanks; I got a good laugh out of this one!

Working at the company, and in this division. I'm pretty sure I'm right about this. You should probably look at the titles of these people now. As in, directly reporting to Rajesh, and Satya. Fowler owns OneNote in addition to Wunderlist and all Education initatives. They're essentially at the highest levels of leadership in Office at the company. Try clicking on a linkedIn profile.

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