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posted by janrinok on Friday October 25 2019, @06:41PM   Printer-friendly
from the David-v-Goliath dept.

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

Stewart Butterfield says Microsoft sees Slack as existential threat – TechCrunch

In a wide ranging interview with The Wall Street Journal’s global technology editor Jason Dean yesterday, Slack CEO and co-founder Stewart Butterfield had some strong words regarding Microsoft, saying the software giant saw his company as an existential threat.

The interview took place at the WSJ Tech Live event. When Butterfield was asked about a chart Microsoft released in July during the Slack quiet period, which showed Microsoft Teams had 13 million daily active users compared to 12 million for Slack, Butterfield appeared taken aback by the chart.

“The bigger point is that’s kind of crazy for Microsoft to do, especially during the quiet period. I had someone say it was unprecedented since the [Steve] Ballmer era. I think it’s more like unprecedented since the Gates’ 98-99 era. I think they feel like we’re an existential threat,” he told Dean.

It’s worth noting, that as Dean pointed out, you could flip that existential threat statement. Microsoft is a much bigger business with a trillion-dollar market cap versus Slack’s $400 million. It also has the benefit of linking Microsoft Teams to Office 365 subscriptions, but Butterfield says the smaller company with the better idea has often won in the past.


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Friday October 25 2019, @07:47PM (3 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday October 25 2019, @07:47PM (#911820) Journal

    Firefox rose from the ashes of Netscape -- which Microsoft destroyed.

    Netscape only won because . . . open source.

    Apache vs IIS . . . open source.

    Linux vs Windows on servers, devices and non-desktop . . . open source.

    I begin to perceive a pattern.

    When it comes to commercial things going up against Microsoft, or that refuse to be acquired for pennies on the dollar, the history of our industry, at least the 1980's and 90's is littered with the corpses in the wake of Microsoft. Good businesses whose product or service Microsoft suddenly took an interest in. Sometimes Microsoft would "partner" with a company. The agreement included terms that if the company went under that Microsoft got all their Intellectual Property. Before the ink was dry on the agreement, Microsoft would go about trying to put their "partner" out of business.

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    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by DannyB on Friday October 25 2019, @07:51PM (1 child)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday October 25 2019, @07:51PM (#911823) Journal

    Since we're talking about browsers, let me mention another one.

    In 1995 Microsoft still didn't recognize the internet. Bill Gates said it was just a fad.

    Suddenly Microsoft realized it was a tsunami. Microsoft needed their own browser and quick.

    They found a small company Spyglass that made a browser of the same name. Microsoft bought it for only $100,000 plus a healthy royalty percent of profits. Guess how many copies of Spyglass that Microsoft ever sold? Spyglass became IE. Microsoft put $150 million into its development over the next years in attempt to "microsoftize" the internet. But never sold a single copy.

    Real nice guys.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @03:47AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @03:47AM (#911968)

      To quote a famous billionaire, "You don't get rich by writing a lot of big checks."

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 26 2019, @02:52PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday October 26 2019, @02:52PM (#912085) Journal

    When it comes to commercial things going up against Microsoft

    Large commercial companies have been eating Microsoft's lunch for a long time. Once you get back the OS and Office products, Microsoft doesn't have much market share in anything.