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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.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday October 26 2019, @10:54AM (1 child)
I've literally spelled out it's not really winning in the following sentence saying "loss leader rather than let Microsoft win. Which isn't the same as winning against them.".
That's irrelevant since they entered a whole different market (cloud providing) instead after losing in the consumer market. On the office suite you could argue the market changed from competing against Open Office to competing against Google Docs. But its not like the market they left isn't profitable so they effectively lost it.
Don't forget large companies in the US don't simply lose. They're too big to fail. Too public sector. Flexible enough to turn to a completely different business model and still come-out strong. They diversify into multiple markets, often competing products, all to make sure they survive their failing products.
That's actually a good example: If Red Hat gets swallowed by big blue, did IBM win? Of course not. The whole point of open source is to lose lead and prevent leveraging one market on another. IBM is very limited in the kind of product bundling they can do now. They can't just force Power down our throats anymore. Microsoft and Intel are in the same boat: The markets they've lost thanks to open source cost them other markets.
Overall, it's not about the 40% they have. It's about what Apple and Google has that could have been theirs and how they had to change their business model to something less toxic to respond to open source. I admit its a rigged game. But the consumer have more options now. Shitty options. But options nonetheless.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday October 30 2019, @10:24PM
Shitty software with crappy documentation because there's no money to pay for proper documentation, and users being the testers because there's no money for proper internal testing because any extra money is put into "oh shiny", and ways to monetize users by invading their privacy instead of just letting them buy the product ...
Of course people would be far more demanding if they had to actually pay for software and services today. How many people would pay $15/month for Facebook (their current per customer revenue).
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