[xmcqdpt2]

I'm so glad we have modern computers with gigabytes of RAM so that we can do real-time chat. This app would have been impossible fifteen years ago when computers had only 1GB of RAM or less. Without modern hardware development we would still all be sending eachother long emails like it's 2006. /s

[jodrellblank]

Where was the chat app of fifteen years ago which could open Microsoft Word documents inside it, such that multiple people could have them open and be shared-editing the same file at the same time? Where was the chat app which could record the video call, add automated transcriptions, and upload it to a SharePoint-alike document store with permissions for the people on the call to watch it? Where was the chat app of fifteen years ago which was cross platform Windows/macOS/iOS/Android/Web browser including video calling?

[LorenDB]

I would imagine that fifteen years ago, nobody needed a document editor embedded in a chat app. In fact, today we don't need a document editor embedded in a chat app. As far as "automated transcriptions", they weren't necessarily practical fifteen years ago. And cross platform? Hello? There have been IRC clients for every platform since forever. And Matrix clients. And many other clients.

In short: Teams is not all that revolutionary or even great.

[jodrellblank]

> "And cross platform? Hello? There have been IRC clients for every platform since forever."

Where's the fifteen year old IRC client which does hardware accelerated video chat from a web browser?

> "In fact, today we don't need a document editor embedded in a chat app."

What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Except we have evidence: given a choice of Teams or IRC, businesses choose Teams.

[egeozcan]

Businesses chose Teams not because of anything listed in this thread of comments. Businesses also didn't choose IE because it's fast and had a lot of features.

People chose Skype because it was fast and it just worked. It stopped being fast and people moved over.

[strix_varius]

You say all this like it's some technical marvel, but my family & friends do all of these things (chat, realtime docs, video, etc) with no problem on a wide variety of hardware with free google accounts.

Meanwhile, at work, I can't reliably see my teammates in video calls because MS Teams still hasn't figured out how WebRTC works.