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> Proprietary centralised services like Slack, Discord, WhatsApp, etc. dominate, most likely because they have the marketing budget for it.

They dominate because they're better for end users who don't mind giving up compatibility/freedom to implement their own client, which the vast majority of people don't want to do. Slack/Discord/WhatsApp are far better instant messaging/voice or video conferencing software than IRC.

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Exactly. IRC is old, perhaps not as old as DNS, but old. Slack et al took off because the UX of IRC is shite. If someone had built a slack-like IRC client and worked on getting people to use it, maybe IRC would be the common protocol. Heck, it could still happen - people really have no loyalty to slack or teams; it’s just what they currently use.

I think we’re only a few years out before Google uses it’s gmail monopoly to forcefully change email.

Are they far better than Matrix?

I use all of them for different groups and conversations, and my experience so far is that none of these is obviously or significantly better than another for most text/image-based group or one-on-one messaging unless you have specific niche needs.

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