
Slack CEO: Microsoft is ‘unhealthily preoccupied with killing us’ - Exmoor
https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/26/21270421/slack-ceo-stewart-butterfield-microsoft-teams-competition
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darrmit
Slack seems to be unhealthily preoccupied with acting oblivious. It’s fair to
say Hangouts is not a Slack competitor. It is _not_ fair to say Teams isn’t.

It’s going to become increasingly difficult for IT decision makers to justify
managing or paying for Slack separately if they’re already heavily bought in
to Office 365 - whether Teams can do everything Slack can or not.

~~~
simonblack
_It’s going to become increasingly difficult for IT decision makers to justify
managing or paying for Slack separately if they’re already heavily bought in
to Office 365_

That's the 'Killing Netscape' playbook - Why pay for Netscape when Internet
Explorer comes built-in?

We all remember what happened with Internet Explorer once it became the
monopoly browser - standards went out the window. (JICYMI - Embrace, Extend,
Extinguish)

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dangus
> Ultimately, Butterfield thinks Microsoft is trying to force the Teams
> comparison because “Microsoft benefits from the narrative that Teams is very
> competitive with Slack. Even though the reality is it’s principally a voice
> and video calling service.”

Is the _CEO of Slack_ confusing Teams with Skype or something?

The first time I saw Teams (which was years ago when it was much more rough
than today) the first thing I thought was “Slack clone.”

I don’t believe for a second that the Slack CEO believes this delusion.

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CameronNemo
What is interesting to me is that Slack sees themselves as a competitor to
email. I feel similarly about Matrix, and I hope that the Matrix protocol does
eventually gain the wide adoption seen by email. Unfortunately Slack lacks a
lot of features that are necessary for it to compete with email on a wide
scale:

* end-to-end encryption support (this is the main value add for email competitors)

* support for federation and self-hosting

* multiple independent client implementations

~~~
vulcan01
Is

> end-to-end encryption support

> multiple independent client implementations

something that your average user really wants? Most people don't use
encryption, and are fine with the standard Mail app on their phones.

~~~
nix23
He means for Business (and i hope your IT-Department cares about secure
communication).

And no, most people USE encryption, because they don't use Email, but Whats-
App.

~~~
vulcan01
Fair enough.

To your second point, do people use WhatsApp because of encryption, or because
of its other features / community lock-in?

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jpalomaki
Teams (and apps like that) are the place where work happens in the future.

They are not (just) about chatting with your coworkers. Both Microsoft and
Slack are busy building them as platforms. Instead of getting a notification
link and jumping to another app, you will take your actions inside
Slack/Teams.

On Microsoft side Fluid [1] is the technology that will enable this. Expect to
see Fluid components from various app that allow users to perform tasks inside
Teams.

Microsoft has also bought other Sharepoint like functionality to Teams. You
can have wikis and share documents there.

I’ve long thought that the best-of-breed tools like Slack, Dropbox and Zoom
will have hard time as individual offerings. Some consolidation would make
sense for me.

[1] [https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/get-started-
with-...](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/get-started-with-fluid-
framework-preview-d05278db-b82b-4d1f-8523-cf0c9c2fb2df)

------
mycall
Microsoft has been in the real-time communications game much longer than
Slack.

    
    
        Skype for Business 2019
        Skype for Business 2016
        Skype for Business 2015
        Lync 2013
        Lync 2010
        OCS 2007 R2
        OCS 2007
        Live Communications Server 2005 (Windows Messenger 5.1 and Microsoft Office Communicator 2005)
        Live Communications Server 2003 (Windows Messenger 5.0)
        Exchange 2000 Conferencing
        Web Telephony Engine

~~~
boublepop
And still their products where shit all the way through until they could sit
down and try to do a feature for feature copy of slack.

~~~
mycall
I don't think Slack has the same telephony integration capabilities (eg. Cisco
iOS)

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matchbok
People like slack because it makes them _feel_ more productive.

Note, that's not the same as actually being more productive, which I rarely
see is the case.

~~~
verdverm
We just moved Cuelang.org primarily to the new GitHub discussions emerging.
Pretty cool, Productivity boon! Now if they could just add a chatroom
feature... or probably integrate teams

Probably fully migrating from slack to something like gitter later

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SigmundA
The thing is Teams does a lot, we just moved our phone system to it and chat
eliminating two separate subscriptions into the O365 one we already had for
email.

Is it perfect, no, but its pretty nice doing all coms through one app that
generally works everywhere.

If MS where smart they would put EVERYONE!!! on Teams NOW and go over to the
uservoice starting with most voted request and get to work and just dominate.

