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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

The real question is why Amazon doesn't have email/calendar/chat/video conferencing; "AWS for Business" or something. I am sure they could get a good deal on the hosting costs!

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I think AWS has been working on an offering like this for a long time. They sue a former exec for joining Smartsheet because it competed with a similar AWS initiative. https://www.geekwire.com/2017/amazon-resolves-contentious-no...

But as a former Amazon employee, the only thing that I can say is that if it's anything like Chime in terms of quality, then Google and Microsoft have nothing to worry about.

Have you used Skype for Business?

https://aws.amazon.com/chime/

I'm curious why Chime, which arrived with great fanfare, never really took off. I've been on conf calls with lots of different corporate customers, and as such have had to use lots of different clients (Zoom, Skype for Business, Google Meet, Bluejeans, etc.) but never once have I had a customer use Chime.

Amazon uses Chime internally. It gets the job done, but the UX is garbage compared to Slack.

I suspect they could fix it, but Jeff, Andy, and Barr all think it's good enough and noone cares about UI.

Look at Amazon and AWS's web page...

I love Chime. It reminds me of Campfire/Propane with the ability to do calls, video, and screen sharing. I used Slack for a while before joining Amazon and I don’t miss it or the culture around its use at all.

We had one vendor use it. The UX is not good and call quality is just okay. I think it isn’t adopted more often because organizations that want to use something new choose way better options and everyone else is afraid to choose anything unproven/weird or already has established accounts with something else. And it really doesn’t help that Chime sort of looks like an AWS service instead of a consumer product.

It’s a crowded market. Skype for B is free. People tend to graduate into Zoom these days.

Amazon does have WorkMail [1]. Per the blurb, WorkMail is "secure, managed business email and calendar service with support for existing desktop and mobile email client applications"

https://aws.amazon.com/workmail/

Edit: Looks like the OP of the post has already mentioned this below. My bad!

> The real question is why Amazon doesn't have email/calendar

Amazon WorkMail: https://aws.amazon.com/workmail/

> /chat/video conferencing

Amazon Chime: https://aws.amazon.com/chime/

Workmail and Alexa for work seem to be the beginnings of this.

https://aws.amazon.com/workmail/

https://aws.amazon.com/alexaforbusiness/

I’ve wondered the same thing about Mozilla. I feel like should be building more value added web services that go beyond just little add-one to the browser itself. First, they would help sustain the org. Second, they would help encourage use of the web as a platform.

AWS is trying [0], with little success so far.

[0]: https://aws.amazon.com/workmail/?c=6&pt=3

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