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Slack made a surprise announcement today that it’s acquired HipChat, once a primary competitor to its workplace chat service, from enterprise software giant Atlassian. As part of the partnership between Slack and Atlassian, HipChat will be shutting down and the two companies will work together to migrate all of its users over to Slack. The same goes for Stride, the chat and collaboration successor to HipChat that Atlassian launched last year. Atlassian clarified that Slack is only buying the intellectual property behind the two products, and that the two companies will be working on future integrations together.
Slack is buying, and shutting down, HipChat and Stride
HipChat, the workplace chat app that held the throne before Slack was Slack, is being discontinued. Also being discontinued is Atlassian's own would-be HipChat replacement, Stride.
News of the discontinuation comes first not from Atlassian, but instead from a somewhat surprising source: Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield. In a series of tweets, Butterfield says that Slack is purchasing the IP for both products to "better support those users who choose to migrate" to its platform.
Butterfield also notes that Atlassian will be making a "small but symbolically important investment" in Slack — likely a good move, given that rumors of a Slack IPO have been swirling (though Butterfield says it won't happen this year). Getting a pre-IPO investment into Slack might end up paying off for Atlassian better than trying to continue competing.
Slack announcement. Also at Bloomberg, Android Police, and Wired.
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(Score: 0, Offtopic) by khallow on Saturday July 28 2018, @03:35AM
This is why getting kidnapped by aliens is such a chore. It's not the anal probing that's the big problem, but getting dumped in alternate realities that are vaguely familiar. I guess it's good enough for their regs on human experimentation. Well, at least you aren't all drinking blue-green carbonated goat milk and forehead-ramming greetings. That place was a real headache!