[wyclif]

In those same four years where Slack’s user base tripled, Microsoft Teams claims it gained 115 million users, showing the world that product quality can’t save a startup when Big Tech wants a piece.

This is the important point: because of tech monopolies it is no longer possible to compete on software quality. This is why Congress needs to break them up.

[sokoloff]

I've done a lot of video calls since pandemic started, usually with our company's chosen vendor, but with some outside companies, it's on their system. It was only a couple weeks ago that I experienced my first Teams call ever, while I've had many external zoom calls, many Google, some Chime, some webex, and I've had many, many external Slack invites.

I wonder if Microsoft's Teams numbers were pumped up by it being freely included in O365 subs. "Oh you're a paying O365 customer; we'll just go ahead and count your included Teams sub as a Teams sub."

[magicalhippo]

I dunno. We got Office 365. If Slack was significantly better than Teams I'm pretty sure we'd pay for it.

As it stands it seems to be the other way around, at least for the features we care the most about (meetings, screen sharing, voice calls).

So I think it's possible to compete on quality, but it's definitely harder as a lot of people will get by with a lower-quality offering.