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Comment by sjg007 | Hacker News Reader

Google should buy them.

Or Microsoft. With that, GitHub, and VSCode, Microsoft will have effectively subsumed the entire average developer workflow again.

Yep. And then someone will start slack/irc 2.0

Not entirely related but IRC spec 3 is in the works. it seems to be taking a long time.

The recent Spectrum acquisition may eventually serve a similar purpose: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18570598

Teams is actually not bad at all (sans linux/skype annoyance), but yeah.

Teams is super slow. Searching for past messages takes forever. Keyboard shortcuts are awkward... the list could go on. I cant say it compares well to Slack.

Keyboard shortcuts in slack are also terrible. Trying to paste a snippet of code simply isn’t possible with the keyboard, for example

For one liners, you can just surround the code in backticks a la `int counter = 0;` (i.e. type first backtick, paste in code, type the second backtick).

For code that's multiple lines long and where you don't care about syntax highlighting, you can surround the code in triple backticks a la (i.e. type first set of triple backticks, paste in code, type in second set of triple backticks):

  ```#include <stdio.h>

  int main() {
      printf("Hello world\n");
  }```

For code where you want syntax highlighting, I do think you either need to drag the relevant text file into the Slack window or use the '+' button to the left of the text box.

Nobody has email or chat search right, not google nor slack.

I find Google's email search to be pretty fantastic, to be honest. It's never failed me, even when I had to search years and gigabytes of emails.

Google's is OK but it's still not as good as a being able to grep a directory full of files, where each file contains a thread or message or whatever.

Only if you know exactly what you are looking for... sometimes going thru years of emails can be super painful.

Teams is terrible.

How so? I actually prefer it over Slack. Namely for those apps in tabs thing, where you can have a wiki and files and all of those apps belong to a channel, email integration, skype, the list goes on and on. Visually, Slack IS cleaner though and has those reaction gifs.

Try copying a short message someone sends you in teams without a Like button popping up and blocking your cursor and then come back here and say that.

I have no idea what you're talking about. I have Teams and Slack open 10+ hrs a day on my computer and I have it on my phone. Apart from Skype/calls and having to use third party bundled app (all on Linux) - it's working just fine.

http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-canceled-8-billion-...

I agree with that. I think it makes a ton of sense for MSFT to buy it given it bought github. Plus, LinkedIn data + slack for customer tickets could integrate with its CRM.

Why not? It's not like their communications product lineup would be any more confusing if they added another service.

I think they’d be obliged to change the name every six months after the acquisition when they hire a new department head. Obligatory 15x price hike will also he implemented with no notice like Google Maps.

Mind if I post this comment on google wave?

Or talk?

Or hangouts?

Or plus?

Or... fuck, i honestly don’t know what Google is pushing for chat today.

It would be a serious enterprise play.. oh wait..

I don't disagree but Google seem set on Hangouts Chat. But it's rubbish and moving incredibly slowly in development terms. I hope the Chat team really get a kick soon to build faster to catch up with Slack and Teams. Not hopeful though.

I don't think Google is ever set on any of their products.

https://9to5google.com/2018/12/02/google-hangouts-shutting-d...

Hangouts Chat is a different product than the one you linked.

https://www.blog.google/products/messages/latest-messages-al...

Disclaimer: I work at Google.

Who says they're for sale?

How could a publicly traded company not be up for sale? As I understand it, a takeover attempt could be either friendly or hostile, but my understanding is that anybody with sufficient money could make an offer above the current market price and the board would be obliged to consider it. They could say no if the price was too low, but I think their fiduciary duty to public shareholders would oblige them to accept a sufficiently good bid.

“fudiciary duty” is typically a corpspeak invoked at allhands to explain why certain benefit is being cut. There’s no obligation to sell afaik and whether the company is public or not should be irrelevant really.

There might not be an obligation to sell, but there is one to serve the shareholders. If the offer is respectable I would think not selling would likely result in lawsuits, etc.

The public float can be a less than majority fraction of total float.

Huh. Are you thinking of Uber here, or is this a more general point?

If the former, I'm not sure that's possible given what we know about their cap table. And if the latter, wouldn't fiduciary duty to minority shareholders still require the board to accept a sufficiently good offer?

No. I know nothing of Uber's capital structure. I helped take a couple of companies public that only offered a minority fraction of their equity to the public markets. They structure as a different class of share.

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