Slack's "Dear Microsoft" [0] letter in 2016 looks even sillier now.
> Dear Microsoft,
> Wow. Big news! Congratulations on today’s announcements. We’re genuinely excited to have some competition.
Uh yeah, I don't think you are..
> Dear Microsoft,
> Wow. Big news! Congratulations on today’s announcements. We’re genuinely excited to have some competition.
Uh yeah, I don't think you are..
Facebook Inc. fought off the old giants: Google, Apple and Microsoft (which even has a stake in FB) when they revealed their 'social networks' and they all failed. Facebook owned that category. No stupid letters or any overreactions.
The same Slack that said "What we’ve seen over the past couple of months is that Teams is not a competitor to Slack" [0]. The IBM deal is essentially keeping Slack alive. Maybe IBM could be thinking with Microsoft "Just like old times?"
From [0].
> “I think there’s this perpetual question, which at this point is a little puzzling for us, that at some point Microsoft is going to kill us,”
Right, predicting Slack's own death, even worse when he knows who will kill Slack.
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/1/21244158/slack-microsoft-t...
0] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/04/amazon-licenses-slack-for-wo...
And they are right about that. Microsoft has been repeatedly convicted for this behaviour (Windows Desktop -> Internet Explorer, and Windows Desktop -> Windows Media Player). Trying to argue otherwise would, IMNSHO, be silly. The only valid question remains, does Slack's offering itself (corporate IM) fall under the office productivity umbrella or not?
[0] and no, you do not have to own 100% of the market before being considered a monopoly
I just can't see including a browser in an OS as some evil practice. It just seems like obvious good sense.
> adding new features to it that are in direction competition with other products is anti-competitive behaviour.
Probably any new feature you could think to add to Office exists somewhere on the internet already, in some form. Is MS just not allowed to add new things now?
Or what if MS manages to add something first, then an upstart competitor appears right after? Does it not count as anti-competitive then?
A shame really, it was probably a better installation experience for alternative browsers than having to use IE!
It's not really clear to me why a few of these application types (like browser and media player) have been singled out in the past, but others are given a pass.
As long as third party programs can be treated the same as first party ones once installed (e.g. default program preferences) I don't really see bundling as inherently anti-competitive.
The AOSP ones are just barely maintained.
I don't think there's a comparable concern here. Teams won't open incidentally in the course of making a Powerpoint; there's no way for me to end up using it without an affirmative decision that it's the right messaging tool for me.
Slack probably have a pretty good case, but it's gonna take years so hopefully they have a plan for dealing with this in the interim.
MS has had Lync and Skype for the longest time. And MSN messenger goes back to the 90s.
In fact, Microsoft has had chat apps as part of their suite since before the company that eventually released Slack even existed.
Even the selling separately argument seems absurd. How is this any different than adding another Office SKU?
> We know that playing nice with others isn’t exactly your MO, but if you can’t offer people an open platform that brings everything together into one place and makes their lives dramatically simpler, it’s just not going to work.
> it’s just not going to work.
Some people love teams, and it’s enough people to stifle the company from spending even more money; and, crucially, from having sensitive data spread across multiple companies instead of just one.
Teams looks A.Fucking.Mazing.
"We ... know you’ll be a worthy competitor."
Yeah, until we sue you...
The best outcome.