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This was super obvious. We used Slack and Zoom in my old job and then as soon as Teams became part of Office365 we ditched the Slack subscription and didn't pay

This was super obvious. We used Slack and Zoom in my old job and then as soon as Teams became part of Office365 we ditched the Slack subscription and didn't pay anything extra. I prefer Slack but I can totally see why a business would make that choice from a financial perspective.

littlestymaar 3y ago
And now that Microsoft has stolen a bunch of customer to Slack through their anti competitive practice, they are now making this move to avoid lawsuit, even though the harm is already done…
- adhvaryu 3y ago
  Why do you think zoom got popular?
  - janandonly 3y ago
    For one thing: more than 120000 congregations of Jehovah's Witnesses worldwide started paying for a Zoom account in early 2020. As far as I know, most of these congregations still pay for Zoom accounts until now.
    - vxNsr 3y ago
      interestingly, they probably all qualify for NFP grants that could significantly reduce their costs
  - Spooky23 3y ago
    Zoom is basically a respin of WebEx. Teams is a bunch of modules bolted on to SharePoint and Exchange. A “team” is an exchange artifact, the voice and video is a module and the rest is a SharePoint front end. Zoom is a better value if you need features beyond the base teams. You pay a simple fee and get the whole shebang. With Teams, you may need different SKUs, including Azure AD, etc to get the full feature set. It’s a funnel to E5.
  - nicoburns 3y ago
    Zoom got popular by being technically superior (better call quality) during a pandemic when the entire world suddenly needed video conferencing.
    - SmarsJerry 3y ago
      Call quality was not the factor. It was that zoom was easy for people to use, no download required, just click a link and enter your name and you’re connected. No logins or downloads so old people could actually work with it.
      - johannes1234321 3y ago
        I never used the zoom web version, but for the client: it simply worked. Getting videocalls with WebEx always was a pain, where it was noisy, video hat issues ... switching to Zoom was day and night. Suddenly doing a video call was a click and it worked.
- CrimsonRain 3y ago
  Slack is harming itself more by being stagnant. Even discord is way better than slack.
  - fknorangesite 3y ago
    > Slack is harming itself more by being stagnant. For better or for worse, Slack has a huge UI overhaul right around the corner: https://slack.com/blog/productivity/a-redesigned-slack-built-for-focus https://slack.com/blog/productivity/a-redesigned-slack-built...
  - yellow_lead 3y ago
    Discord threads seem worse though, or maybe I'm using them wrongly.
  - bombolo 3y ago
    I thought slack harmed itself ditching IRC bridge.
  - jkaplowitz 3y ago
    Slack cares less about their stagnation now that they are part of Salesforce than they did when they were independent.
  - dewey 3y ago
    Not sure I want a tool I use all day to evolve very quickly and change much, I don't really feel like there's some big missing features that would change things dramatically. No business is going to use Discord in a corporate environment.
    - draugadrotten 3y ago
      > No business is going to use Discord in a corporate environment. The current crop of students are all using Discord to collaborate during lab work. Wait 2-3 years until they are team leaders at work and there will be Discords everywhere. I can promise you every Fortune 500 already is using Discord in production, just as they are using generative AI.
TheFragenTaken 3y ago
This probably won't change much. Slack is priced more than three times higher than what you save by not choosing Teams as part of your MS365 bundle.
safety1st 3y ago
Given their history of legal troubles I was pretty surprised at how brazen Microsoft was with bundling Teams into Office for free, a move that looks a whole lot like dumping. Remember, these are the guys who destroyed the market for paid web browsers (and almost killed the open web along with it) when they bundled IE into Windows back in the day. Notably Brad Smith was their chief counsel back then and he still is now - he's gotten a promotion to President in fact.
- outside1234 3y ago
  Apple, Google, Facebook - they are all bundling products - why should Microsoft be different? Asked another way, why is Apple allowed to bundle Music with the iPhone, but Microsoft is not allowed to bundle Teams with Office?
  - throw_nbvc1234 3y ago
    It's because of the outcome not the action itself. Apple bundling music with iPhone doesn't risk putting multiple public companies out of business. If Apple partnered with google (and maybe Microsoft/Windows) to bundle apple music into Android you'd probably have a stronger case.
- dave7 3y ago
  From a certain angle it looks like they're currently trying to destroy the market for paid video games in a similar manner with extreme bundling/giving away.
  - delfinom 3y ago
    Hah, everyone was towards that direction even before Microsoft did Game Pass. Wall St wants fiefdoms, every company is forced to turn everything into a subscription model. Sony didn't help as they are notoriously buying exclusivity with every single game they could (which has worked in their favor)
  - deleted 3y ago
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deleted 3y ago
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kwanbix 3y ago
We use Google's Workspace (which includes meet and chat and is not forced to unbundle them), and I am totally fine with Meet and Chat. I might like to use Slack and Zoom, however, the prices they charge are completely off. Microsoft 365 Business Premium costs 20 euros per month per user. Google Workspace Business also costs 20 euros per month per user. There is no way to justify paying 14 for slack and 15 for zoom. They are not that much better than Meet/Chat/Teams to justify the cost. If Zoom/Slack was 5 each, I might consider it. At 15, no way. This move is only protecting Slack and Zoom from having to compete in value.
- dathinab 3y ago
  But what if companies simple can not compete in value without massively subsidizing their business in ways which are a form of market power abuse? (idk. if that is true) What if slack cost 14 due to all the features beyond chatting, like especially video calls. Maybe this change now gives them a motivation to provide a "text only" version of Slack for 5 or 7, because if I would guess 50%+ of their operation and development cost come from this additional features? > is not forced to unbundle them because monopoly law sadly sadly only applies if you are somewhat winning, but not if you are somewhat irrelevant to a point people forget to even evaluate you when making a choice (in the EU Microsoft 365 is clearly winning huge and e.g. Zoom and Google Workplace are _much_ less relevant/successful compared to the US AFIK).
  - kwanbix 3y ago
    Well, Zoho, which is a very small player, has a suite with everything, and they are doing just fine. An i am sure they are not subsidizing anything. See here: https://www.zoho.com/workplace/?ireft=zoffice https://www.zoho.com/workplace/?ireft=zoffice According to statista, google suite has 50% vs 45.5% of microsoft 365. https://www.statista.com/statistics/983299/worldwide-market-share-of-office-productivity-software/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/983299/worldwide-market-...
MSFT_Edging 3y ago
The loss of slack totally grenaded the culture at my company. There used to be a lot of cross site conversations, folks knew each other. Teams is so dense, it's almost designed to avoid those general chat situations. Not to mention if you have any amount of Linux users, they're basically second class citizens.
dathinab 3y ago
my company is currently considering the same sadly this won't stop the considerations, as we do use Teams for video calls and idk. why but using slack for the video calls seems to not really be considered through tbh. I find both somewhat subpar/dissatisfying.
giancarlostoro 3y ago
I like Teams, but I hate that the actual chatrooms are all DMs and Group Chats. I don't understand why you cant have a main chat in a Teams Team. This leads to dozens upon dozens of group chats that go stale, and for some reason someone on the team picks a really old one, and says they've got a dentist appointment or something obscure. Microsoft, at least add a limit to how many normal chatrooms a Teams team can have. This forum for channels approach is annoying, those are useful for like automated messages.
- miked85 3y ago
  > I like Teams I believe this may be the first time I've heard anyone say that.
  - sebzim4500 3y ago
    I haven't used it myself, but I've heard lots of non-tech people say they like it. I think they are probably comparing it to skype/email rather than to slack.
    - jimnotgym 3y ago
      I like it because of the deep integration with Office
      - olig15 3y ago
        I actually dislike Teams because of the Office integration. Teams where I work ends up with 10’s of ‘teams’ with 100’s of channels. Each channel having its own set of documents that have been uploaded and added as tabs to a channel. It’s impossible to find anything, but even when you do, you end up with a half broken version of web word or excel that fills the page so you can’t chat anymore. I’d rather teams did 2 (albeit complex) things; Direct & Channel chats (with one or more people), and video calls with one or many people. If I want to use Office, I’ll use the right app. It feels like Teams is trying to do too many things, and it’s bad at all of them.
SmarsJerry 3y ago
Of all the things that actually need a subscription, video chat and cloud storage of data seems like the one because it uses bandwidth on Microsoft’s end. Charging a subscription for all of the other Office apps has always been a cash grab.

littlestymaar 3y ago

And now that Microsoft has stolen a bunch of customer to Slack through their anti competitive practice, they are now making this move to avoid lawsuit, even though the harm is already done…

adhvaryu 3y ago
Why do you think zoom got popular?
- janandonly 3y ago
  For one thing: more than 120000 congregations of Jehovah's Witnesses worldwide started paying for a Zoom account in early 2020. As far as I know, most of these congregations still pay for Zoom accounts until now.
  - vxNsr 3y ago
    interestingly, they probably all qualify for NFP grants that could significantly reduce their costs
- Spooky23 3y ago
  Zoom is basically a respin of WebEx. Teams is a bunch of modules bolted on to SharePoint and Exchange. A “team” is an exchange artifact, the voice and video is a module and the rest is a SharePoint front end. Zoom is a better value if you need features beyond the base teams. You pay a simple fee and get the whole shebang. With Teams, you may need different SKUs, including Azure AD, etc to get the full feature set. It’s a funnel to E5.
- nicoburns 3y ago
  Zoom got popular by being technically superior (better call quality) during a pandemic when the entire world suddenly needed video conferencing.
  - SmarsJerry 3y ago
    Call quality was not the factor. It was that zoom was easy for people to use, no download required, just click a link and enter your name and you’re connected. No logins or downloads so old people could actually work with it.
    - johannes1234321 3y ago
      I never used the zoom web version, but for the client: it simply worked. Getting videocalls with WebEx always was a pain, where it was noisy, video hat issues ... switching to Zoom was day and night. Suddenly doing a video call was a click and it worked.
CrimsonRain 3y ago
Slack is harming itself more by being stagnant. Even discord is way better than slack.
- fknorangesite 3y ago
  > Slack is harming itself more by being stagnant. For better or for worse, Slack has a huge UI overhaul right around the corner: https://slack.com/blog/productivity/a-redesigned-slack-built-for-focus https://slack.com/blog/productivity/a-redesigned-slack-built...
- yellow_lead 3y ago
  Discord threads seem worse though, or maybe I'm using them wrongly.
- bombolo 3y ago
  I thought slack harmed itself ditching IRC bridge.
- jkaplowitz 3y ago
  Slack cares less about their stagnation now that they are part of Salesforce than they did when they were independent.
- dewey 3y ago
  Not sure I want a tool I use all day to evolve very quickly and change much, I don't really feel like there's some big missing features that would change things dramatically. No business is going to use Discord in a corporate environment.
  - draugadrotten 3y ago
    > No business is going to use Discord in a corporate environment. The current crop of students are all using Discord to collaborate during lab work. Wait 2-3 years until they are team leaders at work and there will be Discords everywhere. I can promise you every Fortune 500 already is using Discord in production, just as they are using generative AI.

TheFragenTaken 3y ago

This probably won't change much. Slack is priced more than three times higher than what you save by not choosing Teams as part of your MS365 bundle.

safety1st 3y ago

Given their history of legal troubles I was pretty surprised at how brazen Microsoft was with bundling Teams into Office for free, a move that looks a whole lot like dumping. Remember, these are the guys who destroyed the market for paid web browsers (and almost killed the open web along with it) when they bundled IE into Windows back in the day. Notably Brad Smith was their chief counsel back then and he still is now - he's gotten a promotion to President in fact.

outside1234 3y ago
Apple, Google, Facebook - they are all bundling products - why should Microsoft be different? Asked another way, why is Apple allowed to bundle Music with the iPhone, but Microsoft is not allowed to bundle Teams with Office?
- throw_nbvc1234 3y ago
  It's because of the outcome not the action itself. Apple bundling music with iPhone doesn't risk putting multiple public companies out of business. If Apple partnered with google (and maybe Microsoft/Windows) to bundle apple music into Android you'd probably have a stronger case.
dave7 3y ago
From a certain angle it looks like they're currently trying to destroy the market for paid video games in a similar manner with extreme bundling/giving away.
- delfinom 3y ago
  Hah, everyone was towards that direction even before Microsoft did Game Pass. Wall St wants fiefdoms, every company is forced to turn everything into a subscription model. Sony didn't help as they are notoriously buying exclusivity with every single game they could (which has worked in their favor)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

kwanbix 3y ago

We use Google's Workspace (which includes meet and chat and is not forced to unbundle them), and I am totally fine with Meet and Chat. I might like to use Slack and Zoom, however, the prices they charge are completely off. Microsoft 365 Business Premium costs 20 euros per month per user. Google Workspace Business also costs 20 euros per month per user. There is no way to justify paying 14 for slack and 15 for zoom. They are not that much better than Meet/Chat/Teams to justify the cost. If Zoom/Slack was 5 each, I might consider it. At 15, no way. This move is only protecting Slack and Zoom from having to compete in value.

dathinab 3y ago
But what if companies simple can not compete in value without massively subsidizing their business in ways which are a form of market power abuse? (idk. if that is true) What if slack cost 14 due to all the features beyond chatting, like especially video calls. Maybe this change now gives them a motivation to provide a "text only" version of Slack for 5 or 7, because if I would guess 50%+ of their operation and development cost come from this additional features? > is not forced to unbundle them because monopoly law sadly sadly only applies if you are somewhat winning, but not if you are somewhat irrelevant to a point people forget to even evaluate you when making a choice (in the EU Microsoft 365 is clearly winning huge and e.g. Zoom and Google Workplace are _much_ less relevant/successful compared to the US AFIK).
- kwanbix 3y ago
  Well, Zoho, which is a very small player, has a suite with everything, and they are doing just fine. An i am sure they are not subsidizing anything. See here: https://www.zoho.com/workplace/?ireft=zoffice https://www.zoho.com/workplace/?ireft=zoffice According to statista, google suite has 50% vs 45.5% of microsoft 365. https://www.statista.com/statistics/983299/worldwide-market-share-of-office-productivity-software/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/983299/worldwide-market-...

MSFT_Edging 3y ago

The loss of slack totally grenaded the culture at my company. There used to be a lot of cross site conversations, folks knew each other. Teams is so dense, it's almost designed to avoid those general chat situations. Not to mention if you have any amount of Linux users, they're basically second class citizens.

dathinab 3y ago

my company is currently considering the same sadly this won't stop the considerations, as we do use Teams for video calls and idk. why but using slack for the video calls seems to not really be considered through tbh. I find both somewhat subpar/dissatisfying.

giancarlostoro 3y ago

I like Teams, but I hate that the actual chatrooms are all DMs and Group Chats. I don't understand why you cant have a main chat in a Teams Team. This leads to dozens upon dozens of group chats that go stale, and for some reason someone on the team picks a really old one, and says they've got a dentist appointment or something obscure. Microsoft, at least add a limit to how many normal chatrooms a Teams team can have. This forum for channels approach is annoying, those are useful for like automated messages.

miked85 3y ago
> I like Teams I believe this may be the first time I've heard anyone say that.
- sebzim4500 3y ago
  I haven't used it myself, but I've heard lots of non-tech people say they like it. I think they are probably comparing it to skype/email rather than to slack.
  - jimnotgym 3y ago
    I like it because of the deep integration with Office
    - olig15 3y ago
      I actually dislike Teams because of the Office integration. Teams where I work ends up with 10’s of ‘teams’ with 100’s of channels. Each channel having its own set of documents that have been uploaded and added as tabs to a channel. It’s impossible to find anything, but even when you do, you end up with a half broken version of web word or excel that fills the page so you can’t chat anymore. I’d rather teams did 2 (albeit complex) things; Direct & Channel chats (with one or more people), and video calls with one or many people. If I want to use Office, I’ll use the right app. It feels like Teams is trying to do too many things, and it’s bad at all of them.

SmarsJerry 3y ago

Of all the things that actually need a subscription, video chat and cloud storage of data seems like the one because it uses bandwidth on Microsoft’s end. Charging a subscription for all of the other Office apps has always been a cash grab.