
Slack Files EU Competition Complaint Against Microsoft - mattmarcus
https://slackhq.com/slack-files-eu-competition-complaint-against-microsoft
======
Arathorn
On one hand, the playbook of exploiting Office's dominance to push Teams is
very very reminiscent of exploiting Windows' dominance to push IE.

On the other hand, Slack's walled garden is also effectively anti-competitive;
trying to create a monopoly via vendor lock-in to the Slack product &
ecosystem.

It feels like a better bet would be for both of them to adopt and support open
interoperability standards, so users can avoid being locked into _any_ single
vendor, and have full sovereignty over their conversation data. (Disclaimer:
as project lead for Matrix I may be biased :)

~~~
Hokusai
> adopt and supporting open interoperability standards

Can you imagine not being able to send a UPS packet to a DHL address or not
being able to call an AT&T phone from a Verizone one? And how long until I
cannot send mails from my Gmail address to you Outlook one?

We live in the Wild West of the digital age.

I still remember the times that Microsoft was trying to own the WWW thru non-
compatible Internet Explorer extensions. And, also, the time that Microsoft
tried to own Java by adding Microsoft extensions to it.
([https://www.cnet.com/news/sun-microsoft-settle-java-
suit/](https://www.cnet.com/news/sun-microsoft-settle-java-suit/))

Companies have many incentives to create lock-in software and proprietary
protocols that go against the interest of their own users.

~~~
sascha_sl
One of them being complexity and and how fast you can move on new features.
Adding features to a spec'd standard is a horribly slow process, this is the
reason the developer of Signal decided against decentralization. You end up
building XMPP, and that doesn't go so well if your specs are not very
explicit. You can see this in how unreliable OMEMO is with multiple resources
connected.

The Web is already a mature platform and has not actually made things more
interoperable. It replaced a lot of the previous internet infrastructure that
was (IRC, Newsgroups, SMTP which still somewhat clings to life)

~~~
syshum
>> Adding features to a spec'd standard is a horribly slow process

Only if your not one of the Big Tech companies....

If your Google you just say "We are doing this, you can either add it to the
spec or not, but we are doing it"

Then it magically gets added the spec very quickly

~~~
sascha_sl
or it turns into signed http requests where 5+ different partically-
incompatible internet drafts exist!

------
jedieaston
Blocking it's removal? How? Teams was installed with Office on my current
system, and it pops up in Add/Remove Programs. IT Admins can prevent it from
being installed with Office (and remove it from all of their machines if it
has already been installed)[0]. It's not included with Windows either (just as
Office isn't). And Slack isn't blocked from being installed either.

What's the anti-competitive angle here, other than the OS is created by
Microsoft, the IM system is created by Microsoft, the Office suite is created
by Microsoft, and the licenses are often bundled? Apple would be guilty of a
similar thing by shipping Messages.app and iWork with macOS, no?

0: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/teams-
install#...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/teams-install#how-
to-exclude-microsoft-teams-from-new-installations-of-microsoft-365-apps)

~~~
marcinzm
Microsoft has basically a monopoly on enterprise tools such as word/excel/etc.
Apple does not.

~~~
jm4
There are so many more choices than there were 20 years ago. Microsoft makes a
kick ass office suite. There's nothing monopolistic about it. They've been in
this game longer than anyone and that's reflected in the feature set.

Their products and licensing provide more value now than they have in a very
long time. There's also G Suite which is pretty cool. Or you could use Libre
Office.

Anyone complaining about monopolies today has no idea how bad things actually
were in the late 90's to early 00,s. We have more high quality products from
more vendors and better interoperability than probably any other time in the
history of computing.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
> Anyone complaining about monopolies today has no idea how bad things
> actually were in the late 90's to early 00,s. We have more high quality
> products from more vendors and better interoperability than probably any
> other time in the history of computing.

In what areas? I see an industry with more and more consolidation. There is no
longer the serious competition there once was in the field of office suites or
certain kinds of creative software, which is really sad.

~~~
jm4
When was there competition in the office suite space? In the early 90's? Or
the law firms that continued to use a stagnating WordPerfect for way too long
after everyone else standardized on MS Office?

I entered computing at a time when there was basically nothing else available.
Mac was trash and way past its glory days. Linux was a toy that no one would
use seriously. The hardware support was non-existent and if you wanted to get
online you often had to go buy a new modem. The other players today didn't
exist yet.

It's true there is consolidation, but there are also options which didn't
exist at all not too long ago.

------
artpi
There was previous discussion around written asynchronous communication being
a superpower.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23577228](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23577228)

I feel that Slack dominance is hurting the productivity, because:

\- It's impossible to be productive using Slack or Teams alone. The ultimate
power move is to write things up in a company wiki, google doc or an internal
blog

\- Slack is incentivized to keep you IN Slack, for engagement. They don't have
their own permanent-knowledge-base-software, so they pretend it's not needed.

It's a different case with Teams, because they offer quite a roster of
software to write things up permanently - like sharepoint or office365 and
will likely pursue integrating tighter and tighter.

Because Slack is a standalone product, they will push for using chat in the
workplaces MORE. Microsoft can offer chat as a "when needed" basis.

The logistics of trying to be productive on a company group chat led me to
create a free "Win at Slack" mini-course:
[https://deliber.at/chat/](https://deliber.at/chat/)

~~~
basch
>impossible to be productive using Slack or Teams alone. The ultimate power
move is to write things up in a company wiki

Every Team, by default, has a Posts, Files, and Wiki tab. Designing a way to
roll up those Wiki pages, like they do with Sharepoint hubs, would be a good
move.

~~~
hjnilsson
From this perspective, Notion would be the perfect acquisition for Slack.
Adding a wiki / todos / workflow / document editor to Slack with deep
integration.

[https://www.notion.so/](https://www.notion.so/)

------
luka-birsa
It is quite amusing to see Slack filing competition complaint after being so
brash in bashing MS at the launch of MS Teams.

Remember the full page ad they ran in NYT?
[https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/2/13497766/slack-
microsoft-...](https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/2/13497766/slack-microsoft-
teams-new-york-times-ad)

My oh my how the tables have turned. There is something to be said about
Microsoft and their ability to execute in the office space. Even my Dad, an
architect at 70yrs old, is using MS Teams, while he never heard about Slack or
any other collaboration tools.

And looking at their product portfolio around MS Teams, if there is a company
I'd be willing to bet that they win the workplace transformation race is
Microsoft. It's easy to forget when you're working comfortably in the Silicon
Valley tech scene, that there is a real business world out there and MS is the
ruler.

~~~
dehrmann
Playing devil's advocate, Slack is just asking to compete on a level field.
When Apple Music launched, it was preloaded on iOS. It's now the second
largest streaming player. Amazon's offering comes in third. First-mover
advantage seems to be best, but bundling in your platform five years late
looks like a solid path to #2.

~~~
whereistimbo
Well Slack needs more than an enterprise chat app when Google G Suite which
hold 59.91% marketshare [1] also bundling a chat app.

[1] [https://www.datanyze.com/market-share/office-suites--
370](https://www.datanyze.com/market-share/office-suites--370)

~~~
gundmc
You've posted almost this same exact comment 6 times already for this
submission. I appreciate wanting to make a point, but the shotgun spam
approach is just annoying for other users.

------
bearjaws
Slack needed to learn 4 years ago that it takes more than a decent chat app to
make a company fully remote. It's a critical piece of it, but your wiki,
knowledge base, and business planning software are all part of it too.
Microsoft bundles all of these into one package, I fail to see how they are
anti-competitive when they aren't even selling the same products.

Slack failed to see how fragile their product was and now needs to be acquired
or make their own productivity suite.

~~~
whywhywhywhy
You can tell they didn't truly consider the full working remote scenario
because their video/voice call and screen sharing functionality is below
average.

Slack on its own isn't usable for remote work, it has to be Slack + Google
Meet or Slack + Zoom. Slack's tech in that area just isn't up to industry
standards.

------
VWWHFSfQ
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..

[0] [https://slackhq.com/dear-microsoft#](https://slackhq.com/dear-microsoft#)

~~~
ProAm
When your products next innovative feature is a lawsuit the future looks dire.

~~~
mikece
Either that or they are fishing for an acquisition offer from Oracle.

~~~
awalton
Silently wishing Zoom would buy them and become the ultimate workplace
productivity company...

~~~
SteveNuts
Zoom already has a chat app that's basically a Slack clone. I swear, if they
were skinned the same, you couldn't tell the difference (in features, or
layout).

------
toyg
Sounds like a pretty desperate move to me. Teams is not preinstalled with
Windows; it's part of a suite of products. Office products these days don't
even need to be installed (in fact, I bet MS would rather prefer that you did
not).

Imho it's a very, very weak complaint.

~~~
treis
>Teams is not preinstalled with Windows; it's part of a suite of products.

Most businesses are buying that suite for Word/Excel. Teams comes along with
it for free from their perspective. That can definitely be anti-competitive.

I agree that Slack's case is pretty weak here. It's hard to see the harm to
the consumer when Microsoft's bundle is cheaper than Slack's lowest paid plan.

~~~
nojito
How is buying a productivity suite anti-competitive?

There is nothing stopping businesses from using Slack.

~~~
mortehu
You can't pay for Excel without also paying for Teams. Why would you pay for
two team chat solutions?

Teams is not actually free for people who don't want the rest of Office.

That being said, I don't this should be illegal.

~~~
topkai22
There is a free version of Teams now: [https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/microsoft-365/microsoft-team...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/microsoft-365/microsoft-teams/free)

Office web apps also have free tiers, although I don't know if there are
business licensing restrictions.

------
llimos
The thing is, Teams integrates with the rest of Office 365 _much_ more than IE
did with Windows. It's very easy to argue that it's a core part of the
product.

In general, Microsoft has really nailed how if things work well together, they
become more than the sum of their parts. That's why each individual part
doesn't need to be the best in class in order to win. Which is bad news for
Slack, but it's hard to argue that it's bad for consumers.

~~~
pmontra
Well, I use Ubuntu. No problem with my two customers using Slack (one is Mac
basede, the other one is more or less BYOD). All of us install the desktop app
and it's done. If they switch to a more integrated system like Team maybe (and
only maybe) it could be difficult for me to keep using Ubuntu when working
with them. So too much can be bad for some consumer.

Btw, people consume t-shirts, but office suits?

~~~
pnt12
Teams has a browser app that works just like the desktop client, which is
probably just a thin wrapper around a web app.

The only thing ive missed there is the ability to take control of someone
else's pc.

------
ndespres
It's about time. I don't know exactly what Prince means by "gateways vs
gatekeepers" in this context as Slack is itself a pretty closed system, isn't
it? It's not using open protocols or interpretable with competing chat systems
as far as I know. However I do find their allegations that Microsoft forces a
subpar uninstallable copycat product to be accurate and credible. Teams is a
bottom tier application and they are so aggressive about forcing it on users,
it's a little silly.

~~~
paweladamczuk
Came here to comment on the gateways vs gatekeepers as well. Ironically
enough, it wasn't so long ago that Slack decided to stop supporting their IRC
and XMPP gateways.

~~~
nullc
They served their purposes of drawing users from those places into slack's
walled gardens.

------
blntechie
Can’t really shed tears for a company which wanted to kill email and wall off
content into their own proprietary product. They have ridiculed email so many
times that itself is ridiculous. They are still trying to figure out
interoperability of one org’s chat spaces with other orgs when it was a solved
problem 40 years back.

------
echelon
Dear Slack,

You're selling something that isn't a product. Standalone chat is a feature,
and you won't win against a full product offering unless you drastically
reduce your prices. You need to get acquired (by Google or Facebook), because
I don't think you can innovate an office productivity suite fast enough to
compete. And that's clearly the enterprise puzzle piece where chat fits into
nicely.

Microsoft isn't being anti-competitive here. Out of all the FAAMG, they're the
one that least resembles a monopoly.

You're struggling because you are selling _chat_ as a service. Something that
has been free since IRC and AOL Instant Messenger. Something any fifteen year
old can write with web sockets. You built a pretty (through opinions vary)
version with access controls.

You had a chance to build a moat and make acquisitions to fortify your
position, _but you didn 't do it_. You invited competition from Microsoft and
instead of doing something, you rewrote your Electron layout six times and
made a WYSIWYG that everyone hated.

You had four or five years to do something. You had a chance most startup
companies dream of. But here we are. You squandered that chance while you
reveled in hubris.

You're going to get eaten, and there's not much you can do about it now.

~~~
pwinnski
I _somewhat_ agree with you, but I remember how Steve Jobs said much the same
thing to DropBox, but DropBox beats iCloud in nearly every way to this day.

~~~
larrik
Except price. $10/month minimum is a steep cliff, and I just can't justify it.

~~~
magicalhippo
Indeed. I'm near the 5GB limit, and Dropbox keeps annoying me about paying,
but for 10/mo I'd rather go with OneDrive and get Office along for the ride.

Not that I need 1TB of cloud storage at all, which is why I haven't committed
to either yet.

------
tweetle_beetle
I'm no Microsoft fan, but this press release is a bit embarassing. For most
business use cases Slack is more expensive, and less featured than Microsoft
365, and it's having to work very hard to justify its existence.

Slack could be accused of creating a "weak, copycat product" in their file
hosting, document editing, video calling and workflow automation features.

I think this is a long continuation of the awkward brand strategy Slack has
had for some time. "...an open platform is essential" [1] just doesn't ring
true from a closed source SaaS, but it's a good marketing message - so vague
that you can't really disagree. And weirdly it's gone from being a poorly
conceived guerilla marketing strategy (almost complete with bespoke emoji [2])
to a legal case.

It maybe explains how Slack has been racing to embrace Microsoft recently - in
a bid to show how "open" they are, and therefore how much they have been
damaged by "closed" Microsoft? But wouldn't that swing both ways - if they
integrate so easily, then where is the monopoly?

Nov 2016 - Slack declares how thoughtful, craftmanship-y, open, loving, long
term-y and un-Microsoft-y they are [1]

Jan 2018 - Teams launches app store

Aug 2018 - Teams offers free tier to compete with Slack [3]

Mar 2020 - Slack starts integrating Teams calls [4]

Apr 2020 - Slack launches Outlook and One Drive apps [5]

[1] [https://slackhq.com/dear-microsoft](https://slackhq.com/dear-microsoft)
[2]
[https://twitter.com/stewart/status/793870058955104257](https://twitter.com/stewart/status/793870058955104257)
[3] [https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/12/17563710/microsoft-
teams-...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/12/17563710/microsoft-teams-free-
version-slack-competitor) [4]
[https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/27/21197091/slack-
microsoft-...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/27/21197091/slack-microsoft-
teams-integration-calling-features) [5] [https://slackhq.com/increase-
everyday-productivity-with-offi...](https://slackhq.com/increase-everyday-
productivity-with-office-365-apps-for-slack)

~~~
pwinnski
> For most business use cases Slack is more expensive, and less featured than
> Microsoft 365, and it's having to work very hard to justify its existence.

I think that's exactly the complaint: that Microsoft is hiding the true cost
of Teams, using anti-competitive "bundling" to make Slack seem more expensive
by comparison.

Not saying I agree, but that does seem to be exactly the complaint.

~~~
TulliusCicero
Giving a discount by bundling products together is anti-competitive behavior?
I don't really follow this reasoning. Bundling services together like that is
extremely common in all sorts of industries.

~~~
pwinnski
Yes, but bundling is also extremely common in anti-trust cases[0].

The goal of bundling is usually to introduce people who like one of your
products to your other presumably-equally-good products, especially if they
integrate well. Right? Sounds good!

If you're incredibly successful at that, and the most popular of your products
is market-dominating, then that may be leveraging your market position to
squeeze out competitors.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundling_(antitrust_law)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundling_\(antitrust_law\))

~~~
tweetle_beetle
Fair enough. But this isn't exactly humble chat app David versus ubiquitous
groupware Goliath. Slack is growing fast, has had very large investment and is
also trying to dominate this space by bundling as much as it can too. Their
aspiration seems to want to be on the other side of this lawsuit in future.

(Incidentally it feels like that's where every business productivity tool ends
up going: my file sharing service lets me edit documents, my project
management tool lets me send emails, my email client lets me chat, my CRM lets
me log tickets, my code repository service lets me host websites etc.)

------
skywritergr
The additional problem I see with Slack is that their calls/video chat option
is really inadequate and almost everyone is opting for Zoom. Zoom + Slack is a
very steep price point for a lot of companies, especially in an era of cost
saving and insecurity about the future.

My company opted to move to MS Teams because the experience is better as it
integrates calls + chats and we were already using office365 for emails and
documents anyway, so it was "free". As someone said already, it's hard to
compete with free.

I can't see Slack getting out of this in one piece. I see Amazon being the
obvious choice here.

------
perfectstorm
Didn’t their CEO say that Teams is not a competitor.

Looks like he said it in May 2020. So i wonder what happened since then.

[https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/26/21270421/slack-ceo-
stewar...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/26/21270421/slack-ceo-stewart-
butterfield-microsoft-teams-competition)

~~~
pedrocx486
If I'm not mistaken their CEO (Stewart) is known for saying some... Weird
things. And then changing his mind right after. (My experience is from as an
user on early Flickr days and his game, Glitch.)

------
physicsguy
Find it odd that so many people hate Teams so much. For me, it works
considerably better than using Slack did in my previous position; the only
downside for me personally was the lack of a Linux client initially, which is
now present.

It's also considerably better than Slack for mixing other communications in,
which is widely used in corporates: video calling, screen sharing, and the
fact that you can hook it in with phone systems. Given it's effectively
replaced Skype, that's not really surprising. Prior to teams being introduced
at my current company, we were using a mix of Jabber, Cisco WebEx, and other
ad-hoc tools in various teams. Now we can use Teams to do all of that.

------
fasicle
"Microsoft has illegally tied its Teams product into its market-dominant
Office productivity suite, force installing it for millions, blocking its
removal, and hiding the true cost to enterprise customers"

Is teams auto installed with the Office suite and can it not be uninstalled?

~~~
ndespres
Yes it is auto-installed and auto starts and is very annoying to get rid of,
as a sysadmin. It also installs itself per-user, so non-admins get prompted
constantly to install it themselves and can do so even with limited
privileges. It is persistent.

~~~
nojito
You can disable teams entirely from your deployment.

~~~
ndespres
Good luck doing that when it was automatically enabled and deployed, so now
users have data on it already.

~~~
jankiehodgpodge
If you're deploying office anyway you simply remove teams from the config XML
for the installer. Pretty simple really.

------
gruez
>Microsoft has illegally tied its Teams product into its market-dominant
Office productivity suite, force installing it for millions, blocking its
removal, and hiding the true cost to enterprise customers.

So what's the core issue here? That Microsoft bundles Teams with Office 365,
or that it gets auto-installed and can't be removed? If that's considered
anti-competitive, is it possible for eg. Evernote to go after them as well,
because OneNote is also bundled? What about Dropbox, because Onedrive is
bundled?

~~~
simion314
Not OC, IMO MS should be forced to offer 2 different products, Office without
Teams and Teams should be an independent product you would have to opt-in and
buy. Then if Teams and Office communicate then this protocol should be open so
anyone could use it.

~~~
Semaphor
but what makes teams different from the rest of the suite? to me it sound like
arguing that bundles should not exist.

~~~
simion314
Yes, I think we need to investigate if bundles is a good thing for the world.
I have an old memory from my childhood, in Romania during communism I went
with my grandma to buy oil(or something like that) and if we wanted to buy
that we were also forced to buy some other crap like pencils so the shop would
get rid of old stock(I apologize if my memory is tricking me , maybe someone
can confirm this I can't find anything on google with my search terms). So
bundling feels to me dirty, I get forced into something I might not like.

Maybe the actual problem is that big companies have a lot of money that they
can spend on this products and offer them for free then make it impossible to
create a fair competition. Would MS get the same Windows installs if the
computers would come with the choice of different OSs )from what I read in
most shops in the world options with alternatives are not present)

~~~
gruez
>I have an old memory from my childhood, in Romania during communism I went
with my grandma to buy oil(or something like that) and if we wanted to buy
that we were also forced to buy some other crap like pencils so the shop would
get rid of old stock

bundling of physical goods with bundling of digital goods isn't really
comparable because the latter doesn't have any marginal cost. If you don't use
it, nothing's being wasted.

>So bundling feels to me dirty, I get forced into something I might not like.

That's not really a problem with bundling per se. If I get amazon prime for
free/fast shipping and it includes free prime video and twitch prime, I don't
feel "forced" into using those services. What's happening in this case though,
is that microsoft was apparently auto-installing teams, which is questionable
but not something intrinsic with bundling.

>Maybe the actual problem is that big companies have a lot of money that they
can spend on this products and offer them for free then make it impossible to
create a fair competition.

Can't you make the same argument about any free service offered by a company?
eg. free cloudflare making it harder for paid cdns to compete, or free git
hosting by github/gitlab making ti hard for a paid service to compete?

~~~
simion314
About free GitHub, if GitHub financials would be independent and they can
afford offering some free feature then I think is 100% fair, it would not be
fair if GitHub would get money from Azure profits so they can offer everything
for free so all competitors fail.

When I buy something and get some extra free crap-ware, is that actually free?
As an example some internet companies here would offer you as a free bonus
antivirus software - is that free or it is paid from our money and maybe with
our data ? Is Amazon Prime free stuff free or it is paid from your pocket but
in an indirect way.

The example from my memory was more about the felling I have when I think
about that, is like when you buy a phone or some OS and some shit is already
installed and you can't remove it,

~~~
gruez
> About free GitHub, if GitHub financials would be independent and they can
> afford offering some free feature then I think is 100% fair, it would not be
> fair if GitHub would get money from Azure profits so they can offer
> everything for free so all competitors fail.

So what you're saying is that if github is offering it for free, and they
themselves are profitable, that's fine, but if the company is being subsidized
by microsoft it's not fine? Why draw an arbitrary distinction at the corporate
level? Furthermore, if microsoft teams is being developed under the
team/organization as the rest of office, is that fine then?

Also, what about github gists? It's a free pastebin that has zero connection
to the main site. You can post with an account or anonymously. Either way it's
free, and there aren't any benefits conferred to you for having a github pro
subscription. Is github being anti-competitive by offering it? Are they
putting all the other pastebin websites out of business? If anything it's
_worse_ than teams because with teams you at least have to pay for the bundle
to access it.

>Is Amazon Prime free stuff free or it is paid from your pocket but in an
indirect way.

I'm not sure how prime video (included with amazon prime) can ever be
profitable on its own. They spend millions (billions?) on original
programming. How can you ever recoup that by some "indirect way"?

>The example from my memory was more about the felling I have when I think
about that, is like when you buy a phone or some OS and some shit is already
installed and you can't remove it,

You're probably talking about software vendors who pay OEMs to have their
software pre-installed on their phones. In this case the software vendor hopes
they can recoup the initial cost somehow (eg. by showing ads, collecting data,
or upselling the customer to a paid subscription). This is very different than
what microsoft's doing. There's no ads in teams. It's probably not spying on
you (and even if it did microsoft could already do that on its own). There
isn't teams premium either. In short, the incentive structure is completely
different.

~~~
simion314
Maybe my solution is not good, do you have a better one or you think there is
no problem here and giants can abuse their money to subsidize some stuff not
because they want to be nice but because they want to win a market that can
later exploit or because they want to kill possible competition. A similar
problem is happening when giants buy smaller competitors and close them down.

------
jpalomaki
I've been using Slack for a while and quite much like the basic functionality
(chat) when you working in single organization context.

However recently I've been playing around with Teams quite a bit and I'm
feeling this integrated experience with all the tools is the future. Even when
running just in browser it is already pretty good. You have chat, calls, mail,
can collaborate on documents etc. Having everything in one package feels
convenient. Not saying it's perfect. There are bugs and for example different
file storage backends (Sharepoint vs Onedrive) are a bit confusing.

It will be challenging to for these "best of breed" apps (Dropbox, Slack,
Zoom) to compete with the integrated offering from Microsoft. It's just so
easy to get everything from single vendor. One user/group management, one
invoice etc.

~~~
toyg
_> It will be challenging to for these "best of breed" apps (Dropbox, Slack,
Zoom) to compete with the integrated offering from Microsoft._

It has always been. Windows has had Dropbox-like features all the way back to
1998; but they sucked (and there wasn't enough bandwidth...), so people didn't
use them. We've had corporate IM offerings since forever, and Skype existed
waaay before Zoom. The likes of Dropbox have thrived _by focusing on building
better products, more powerful and easier to use_. There is space for everyone
in the market, if they have the best product and/or the best timing.

------
skc
This is so strange. I seem to remember Slack somewhat mockingly welcoming the
competition in this space when Teams launched.

~~~
microcolonel
Honestly, Slack has become so baffling to me. As somebody who used it every
day for a couple of years at work, then not for a year or so, it is completely
unrecognizable today and (in my opinion) a lot more complex to use. I have a
hard time reading and understanding the layouts in Slack as it stands today.

~~~
jamil7
The (newish) mobile app on iOS is really confusing layout wise, I thought I'd
get used to it but it confuses me every time. It's also weirdly slow for a
native app, I'm not sure how they managed that.

------
albertzeyer
I really think we need some laws which require companies to open their
protocols to allow seamless integration with other companies or open source
implementations. There is no real reason why this should not be possible. E.g.
take chat protocols. WhatsApp, Facebook messenger, Hangout, and all the
others. It would be easy to have some way that they could communicate with
each other. But companies don't want that, because they want the vendor lock-
in. This is bad for everyone in the end. The only real way to solve this is if
this is enforced by some law. I'm not really seeing that some law like this
would be possible in the US, though. But maybe in EU...

~~~
chirau
You can't force someone to use open protocols. What if their value preposition
is exactly that, superiority to open protocols?

~~~
albertzeyer
You can't enforce that, but you can enforce that they open their own protocol,
and also that the API is open to be used by anyone else, i.e. anyone can
develop an own client.

~~~
TulliusCicero
How does that work with top-down moderation? E.g. some user X is harassing
other users, so the company running the platform wants to ban them. If the
protocol is open, isn't banning basically impossible, since they could just
change to a client not controlled by said company?

edit: hmm, I guess this depends on what it means for the protocol to be open
vs the platform itself...

------
simonebrunozzi
Same guys that on November 2nd, 2016, run a full page ad on the NYT [0],
titled "Welcome, Microsoft, to the revolution", and signed "your friends at
Slack".

How ironic.

[0]: [https://slackhq.com/dear-microsoft](https://slackhq.com/dear-microsoft)

~~~
aw1621107
Wrong thread?

~~~
dang
We'll move it.

------
samfisher83
Teams from what I understand is pretty much free with office. Slack is going
to have a hard team competing with free. It also doesn't have the same video
desktop sharing capabilities as teams from when I last used it.

~~~
hyperdimension
Well, without a strong opinion either way, I'd just point out that IE was free
with Windows (where their competitors were not,) and that point didn't work
out all that well for Microsoft in the end.

~~~
FDSGSG
> that point didn't work out all that well for Microsoft in the end.

But in the end it worked perfectly well for Microsoft. The settlement was
essentially a slap on the wrist.

------
benlumen
I've been thinking about antitrust a lot recently. Years ago, Microsoft were
losing in court over the right to ship their browser with their operating
system.

Now, you get reminded how great Edge is when you try to change your default
browser, you get the new one in a forced Windows update that launches the
browser itself on startup, places shortcuts back in your task bar, etc.

------
goguy
I personally see this as a weak move. Surely a bundle of software can include
whatever they desire to include.

What next a law suit for bundling Access? Don't get any ideas Oracle...

~~~
72deluxe
Yes, I am personally disgusted that installing Office FORCES a word processor
and spreadsheet to be installed when all I wanted was WMF clip art!

------
suifbwish
I have used slack at 3 different jobs and they seem to have lost touch with
what the user wants and struggles with in their environment. Before launching
some anticompetitive tirade they should focus on becoming a better product.
There is no way I’m going to side with them while they auto hide contacts that
I talk to throughout the day just because I have a list of several hundred.
Also what’s up with not allowing multiple tabs open to view multiple
conversations at the same time? Even Facebook has that feature. If anyone at
slack is listening.. get off your antitrust high horse and get back to coding,
you’ve let your product become inferior and this just sounds pathetic asking
for the government to step in and help you do what your design/dev team cannot
do for you.

------
markshepard
I think Slack's case against MS has legs. I work for a company that makes a
competitive product ([https://www.airsend.io](https://www.airsend.io)) to
Teams/Slack. It gives a bit of insight on what is happening here.

Teams comes free with office 365 (now microsoft 365). For just 5$ per user/per
month one can get email/one drive/office web apps and teams. There is no way
slack can compete with the pricing. Slack's pricing starts at 6.67$. For
businesses, office apps are a must have. When Teams is bundled with office
apps, there is really not a reason for businesses to go and pay for Slack. So
one can argue MS is using its dominant position in office suite to undercut
the competition. The fair thing to do is charge some money for Teams.
Personally I feel we need to have more diversity and choices in the IT systems
we use. Increasingly the tools we use are controlled by 2/3 dominant platforms
(4 companies account for 49% value of Nasdaq 100). It is not good for
customers in the long term. Once you obliterate the competition by bundling it
free, one can always come back and raise the price.

There is some serious blood between MS and Slack (It all goes back to the time
when MS tried to acquire Slack). FWIW, Slack's posture during that time was
also not really good (Cocky). I am guessing - It hurt somebody's ego very
badly in MS. So the leadership team in MS made it as a personal mission to
obliterate Slack. The whole game is playing out now.

------
youeseh
There are laws and companies will use those laws to their advantage as much as
possible. Not doing so is stupid.

Just as Slack is trying to get Microsoft in trouble over antitrust, Microsoft
is currently trying to get the US to investigate Apple over their App Store.
Everyone is looking for an edge. It is better to use that edge while you're
competitive than when its too late. Except in Microsoft's complaint about the
App Store, the train left the station a long time ago.

------
runevault
The thing this has me thinking about is, assuming Slack wins this lawsuit, can
MS no longer add any more fully featured products to Office? Not saying that
is good vs bad, it just becomes interesting if their position suddenly means
they must create new bundles for new offerings and cannot ever leverage
existing offerings to get into a market.

Perhaps that would be fair, being such a massive company. I just don't know.

------
gigel82
I'm surprised Discord isn't showing up in the comments. We moved from Slack to
Discord (even though we get Teams "for free" it doesn't get as much usage and
setting it up to work with outside-the-org collaborators is painful), and I
know of a lot of other companies / open-source projects moving to Discord too.

The only thing we're really missing from Slack is threads.

~~~
gverrilla
yeah, I agree. Also, gamers and teenagers are using it and not Teams or Slack.

------
mensetmanusman
It’s definitely monopolistic to include Teams into Office(Excel,Word,PPT) only
after slack shows value. As a user though, Teams is working out well for us.

This is MS’s version of sherlocking. Every big Tech company does this.

I think one work around would be to have an independent council that
recognizes these events, and forces the big players to pay out $100M per
incident. This might satisfy most parties involved.

~~~
hkt
Most regulators play pretty much that role, and the EC has that sort of power.
Doesn't seem to actually achieve much though - they stop short of breaking up
companies which is probably the issue.

------
rosywoozlechan
Idea: find some feature that's part of a software suite, like the ability to
zoom on Windows. Build a business around just that feature, like sell a zoom
tool for Windows. If the business flounders start an anti-trust lawsuit
because Microsoft includes that feature for free in Windows.

------
fblp
Hey i am wondering if someone within knowledge of EU competition law can give
their analysis on this.

The thing that stands out to me is that this is a private competition law
action - it is not a government agency/commission taking action. This
indicates that the government agencies in the jurisdiction don't currently see
this as a priority. Many of the prominent anti trust actions in tech have been
taken by regulators (eg EU commission vs Google).

From my brief understanding of competition law barriers to entry and consumer
detriment are issues the court considers. As others have stated, Microsoft is
far less dominant with cloud office products than they were with windows pcs
in the 90s. They are also not the incumbent in the chat market trying to block
competition out.

------
qwe098cube
So this is another reboot of the browser wars but with messengers? Is this the
new era of messenger wars?

~~~
72deluxe
Yes it seems so! But it's different to the browser wars because the browsers
used to used sensible amounts of RAM, and these "modern" chat systems seem to
like ballooning quantities of RAM for displaying text and pictures, eg. Slack
on my Mac is using 365MB of RAM via its 5 processes.

If only the wars was about efficient applications then we would all win.

I recall using MSN Messenger on a machine with 64 MB of RAM I think and it did
approximately the same - instant messaging.

~~~
qwe098cube
well chrome has won the browser wars in the long run and chrome is notorious
for its memory hunger. So maybe RAM hogging is the key to success.
Interestingly Teams uses >1.2GB of RAM via its 6 processes on my mac, same as
Outlook.

------
bkor
Something I didn't see someone mentioning: Microsoft is moving everyone from
Skype for Business over to Teams. Any enterprise customer will have to
migrate. Skype for Business is quite different from Skype itself, basically a
marketing thing.

Moving enterprise customers over from a chat&screen sharing app to teams is
quite a change. There's loads more functionality, options, etc. I don't think
if you had Skype for Business before you'd ever consider anything such as
Slack or similar.

From what I noticed Skype for Business is used often within enterprise
companies.

~~~
discordance
Skype for Business was a horrible horrible product and i'm glad we were
switched to Teams

------
replyifuagree
Slack has a quality problem that they really need to get on solving. Their
desktop client has way too many weird quirks, and I just plain refuse to run
their android client anymore.

That said,it sucks less than teams.

------
msoad
Messaging is big and Slack is too small to compete in this space. The only
viable way out for Slack is to join Google. Because we all know Google can't
build messaging apps!

------
shafyy
I think there needs to be a law that forces companies that benefit from
network effects to open their standards once they reach a certain market power
(similar to antitrust and monopoly laws).

For example, Twitter would be forced to open their standard and then anyone
can build clients (and host servers), just like IMAP and POP3 works for email.

I think this even will have a bigger effect than breaking up these companies,
and it will be easier to push through politically.

Edit: Typo

------
kodablah
Can I be against MS bundling Teams _and_ against Slack using the government to
unbundle it? I know that public companies attack for growth at all angles,
including litigious ones, but this turns me off of Slack's general business
strategy (if I wasn't already). I yearn for the company that accepts modest
growth, applies its principles to itself only, and remains technically focused
no matter how large.

~~~
hkt
There are two main conceptions of antitrust: making markets fairer, and
controlling price for consumers. The latter is the American approach, the
former the European. It is worth considering the fact that without adequate
competition prices will rise and quality will fall. Slack are essentially
asking for a market optimisation to allow them to continue improving their
product without Microsoft maneuvering to reduce its effective price to zero.
This, I would say, is a net gain for everybody.

~~~
kodablah
That's the point, they don't need market optimization to continue improving
their product. They are just leveraging it because it's a weapon provided to
them. There is no lack of adequate competition in the chat space and no need
for the government to make MS stop including the products it wants to in its
office suite.

While this individual action may appear on the surface a net gain for
everybody (though you surely meant everybody but Microsoft), the net negatives
of continued unnecessary government interference in tech are harder to
recognize since each just increases legislative momentum. Then we get
surprised we weren't stauncher and more principled when the heavier hand is
shown.

------
withinboredom
Can someone explain to me how the “leading channel-based messaging platform”
can complain about a smaller competitor bundling with a large product?

~~~
searchableguy
Team is already bigger than slack.

> Slack previously revealed it has 12 million daily active users back in
> October, but the company has not publicly updated this number since.
> Microsoft Teams usage has soared over the past year, reaching 44 million
> daily active users during a big increase in demand earlier this month. Slack
> has instead been trying to steer the conversation to how many actions are
> taken in Slack compared to its competitors, and how much people love to use
> its app.

0] [https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/26/21195092/slack-new-
user-r...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/26/21195092/slack-new-user-records-
coronavirus-pandemic-remote-working-growth-concurrent-users)

------
blackoil
As a layman, it seems link companies looking to cut costs in current
environment are finding Teams (free) more sensible option than paying millions
to Slack. So while the WFH push is doing wonders for other communication
platforms like Zoom, Slack is not seeing that benefit. Otherwise, it looks a
bad time for a company to be distracted by political games.

------
heapslip
The battle of the glorified IRCs is on! Sure, Microsoft is shady as usual (not
all of it, but a good part), but once Teams get stable and everything actually
works, it should smoke Slack. At least Teams offers more than chat, and it has
a justified need for running in a browser.

------
rydre
The best move now would be for Slack, Zoom to merge, buy Airtable and Webflow,
quickly try to build a moat. No one will get this opportunity again. But they
might just build the next Google/Facebook/Apple this way.

------
tedk-42
Sounds like a typical corporate move by Microsoft. I side with slack on this
one in that Microsoft is using its position with Office as a dominant
productivity tool and wedging their Teams product in there.

Vox had an article about it a year ago:
[https://www.vox.com/2019/10/14/20910510/microsoft-
government...](https://www.vox.com/2019/10/14/20910510/microsoft-government-
antitrust-investigation-apple-amazon-google-facebook)

It's the long game they can play because they have the resources for it. If
they bankrupt slack by offering an alternative that's free and almost at
feature parity, then it's an easy win for them to absorb the short term
running costs of their own chat product Teams.

~~~
minhazm
What about Microsoft bundling OneDrive? Or One Note? Should they be forced to
remove those too? I don't understand how Microsoft is in the wrong here. This
isn't like them bundling it into Windows. O365 is a paid product and users are
specifically paying for a productivity bundle, where Teams makes perfect sense
as a product. They previously bundled Skype here IIRC, which was also a
chatting app, they just replaced it with Teams.

If you want to argue that Teams ripped off of Slack, I won't disagree with you
there. But Slack was just an evolution of IRC + plugins also. So it isn't a
novel idea that they came up with, it was just well executed.

I don't even like Teams, I much prefer using Slack. But Microsoft having a
productivity suite where they're offering a productivity app seems like a
perfectly reasonable thing to do. Google is doing the same thing with Google
Meet/Chat, it's going to get bundled in Google Apps for Business.

~~~
tedk-42
I don't mind products competing against each other and copying features from
each other.

But to make a clone of a product, and slip it into your existing offering
which is very popular amongst the general populous is an anti-competitive
practice.

Microsoft consistently walk a fine line with this sort of crap. Whenever I
update my PC, I DO NOT want to know about the new features of Edge and then be
prompted to replace my default browser with it.

Firefox, Chrome and other browsers don't charge for their product but Slack
does. It's this sort of thing that in which Microsoft need an occasional slap
in the face for.

------
LoSboccacc
> its market-dominant Office productivity suite

is it really that dominant nowadays? I think it was around late 2000s when I
last saw a 'use MS Word format' in any personal/corporate document exchange

------
Jaruzel
Slightly off topic, but when you share this article via social media, the page
title becomes:

"Slack Files EU Competition Complaint Against Microsoft - _Several People Are
Typing_ " [1]

Due to the og:title tag being different.

\---

[1] Emphasis mine.

------
spians
Not exactly related but how is Microsoft's approach to Teams any different
than Google's approach to Google Chat (or Hangouts Chat) that also is
component of G-suite?

~~~
ascorbic
G-Suite isn't a monopoly, but Office is.

~~~
whereistimbo
According to [https://www.datanyze.com/market-share/office-suites--
370](https://www.datanyze.com/market-share/office-suites--370) Google holds
more marketshare with G Suite with 59.91%, compared to Microsoft Office 365
with 39.96%

~~~
dang
You posted this 5 times. Please don't post duplicate comments to HN. It
strictly lowers the signal/noise ratio.

If you want to refer to what you posted elsewhere, a link is fine.

------
mothsonasloth
If someone could make a JIRA/Confluence/Slack for devs it would make my
current life* very easy.

* life consists of Slack, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Jira, Confluence and Sharepoint....

~~~
mnkypete
If you are on Jira Cloud ping me, we have something very interesting launching
soon ;)

------
dzonga
one of those times, where I will say the big co isn't in the wrong. slack, has
suffered the hand of the market. that the deck, the market dealt wasn't in
your favor. is slack a product, could be ? but what are the advantages ?
strategy 101. real business don't ride on fashion, but utility. teams is good
enough.

------
betimsl
IRC files a law suit against slack.

~~~
nullc
Next step is for microsoft to start running gateways into slack, leaving users
on slack as second class citizens, and then shutting down the gateways when
enough users have been pulled into their walled gardens to give them critical
mass.

------
outside1234
But Google and Apple do exactly the same thing? Why no competition complain
for them?

------
simonkafan
> We want to be the 2% of your software budget that makes the other 98% more
> valuable; they want 100% of your budget every time.

Please. You are a company in a capitalistic system, it's your goal to make
money. If you'd have the chance, you'd also take 100% of your customers money
every time.

------
shay_ker
i do love one walled-garden suing another

------
6c696e7578
Don't worry. Teams is terrible, you don't need to worry.

------
trekrich
They are trying the sco business model, look how that turned out for them!

------
Dwolb
Good for Slack. Filing a major lawsuit against one of the biggest tech
companies is an incredible decision to make.

Microsoft has been doing this for years with basically all of its products and
hasn’t really changed its behavior [1]. They continue to get fined for not
abiding by earlier EU judgements and rulings.

Curious to see what regulators end up doing to force compliance since these
fines don’t seem to do so.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/18/business/dealbook/eu-
anti...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/18/business/dealbook/eu-antitrust-
tech-stocks.html)

------
microcolonel
> _Microsoft has illegally tied its Teams product into its market-dominant
> Office productivity suite, force installing it for millions, blocking its
> removal, and hiding the true cost to enterprise customers._

I feel like it's bad for a society to place no weight on agreements. “Force
installing” is a pretty bold claim, given that Office is a piece of self-
updating software that adds new components on a regular basis, and which says
as much when you install it. Teams is a component of the Office suite in the
same way that Microsoft's SSO system is.

If this point is considered to contribute to a successful claim, I think it
says something sad about the EC.

~~~
untog
"force installing" in this context means "you want X? you're getting Y too,
whether you like it or not".

No, you're not forced to install both X and Y. But it's pretty clearly taking
advantage of a dominant market position.

~~~
microcolonel
“I want to install Discord, but without FFMPEG” is not grounds for a
complaint.

I don't like Microsoft's software, nor do I use it, but if this is illegal and
the Apple App Store isn't, the EC is none but a lawfare weapon for many-
billionaire companies.

