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> Slack, one of the most valuable companies in recent years, is a reskinned IRC that eats more RAM. in a certain sense you're not wrong, but this is almost inf

> Slack, one of the most valuable companies in recent years, is a reskinned IRC that eats more RAM. in a certain sense you're not wrong, but this is almost infamous-Dropbox-comment level of missing the point. IRC is a great technology and is pretty useful if you only need to communicate with other tech nerds. it's not a very inviting technology to lay users and businesses though. on the client end, the default config exposes your IP address (at least, this was the case when I last used mIRC). on the server side, you need at least one person who actually understands how IRC works to configure it and keep your communications secure. for a fee, slack takes care of all this for you. it's also a lot easier to share stuff that isn't text over slack.

Barrin92 8y ago
This circles back to the original point of the article about consumer welfare as a top priority when it comes to anti-trust. Yes, Slack no doubt provides some value by easing access to some technology for people who previously could not access it, but if this comes at the cost of deep innovation and hard performance, it will compound long term issues. This seems to be a general theme of the web. User acquisition and comfort is placed above all else, while performance and structural innovation are neglected. If aerospace engineers would build planes the way we build webapps the planes would double in size and fuel consumption every five years. If those engineers were employed by a web startup we would tell them not to worry as long as the user numbers grow and the seats are comfortable. when it comes to anti-trust, and evaluating technology in general, we need to be a lot more critical of consumer welfare as a meaningful measure. Yes. 'dropbox guy' was wrong when the metric is collected startup money and user convenience. Will he have been wrong in 30 years when we evaluate what the web is and what it could have been if it was built with more rigor?

Barrin92 8y ago

This circles back to the original point of the article about consumer welfare as a top priority when it comes to anti-trust. Yes, Slack no doubt provides some value by easing access to some technology for people who previously could not access it, but if this comes at the cost of deep innovation and hard performance, it will compound long term issues. This seems to be a general theme of the web. User acquisition and comfort is placed above all else, while performance and structural innovation are neglected. If aerospace engineers would build planes the way we build webapps the planes would double in size and fuel consumption every five years. If those engineers were employed by a web startup we would tell them not to worry as long as the user numbers grow and the seats are comfortable. when it comes to anti-trust, and evaluating technology in general, we need to be a lot more critical of consumer welfare as a meaningful measure. Yes. 'dropbox guy' was wrong when the metric is collected startup money and user convenience. Will he have been wrong in 30 years when we evaluate what the web is and what it could have been if it was built with more rigor?