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To make it clear:

Groove -> Office Groove -> SharePoint Workspace (not SharePoint in general)

Office Communicator -> Lync (unrelated to Groove, internally developed from the start I think)

Ah, I didn't realize they'd rebranded it, because of course they did. I'm somewhat familiar with sharepoint, but have never used SharePoint Workspace, so I don't know if that's a marginalized utility within the Sharepoint infrastructure or if it's a big piece that really is getting a lot of use.

I wouldn't be surprised if in a year or two, yammer is also rebranded under the SharePoint name as something like SharePoint TeamChat 2013 Enterprise. If that happens, it'll likely drop off my radar as quickly as Groove did.

Some features of Lync came in part from the Parlano acquisition in 2007:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2007/aug07/08-29Pa...

Interesting to think that Parlano started as an in-house java chatroom/im tool at UBS (the big Swiss bank).

I wonder if any of the team from UBS that were spun off made any money from the acquisition.

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