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Companies undermine potential markets for others all the time - that’s what adding new features does. Facebook adding chat was a huge blow to MSN messenger. Red

by 542458 3y ago

Companies undermine potential markets for others all the time - that’s what adding new features does. Facebook adding chat was a huge blow to MSN messenger. Reddit adding image uploads natively to their platform was a huge blow to third party image hosts. Excel adding python scripting is a huge blow for a large class of data analysis tools. And yes, O365 adding chat was a big blow for Slack. But I think Teams' displacing Slack has more to do with the fact that Slack doesn't offer value equivalent to it's fairly high price. There are lots of features in O365 that never disrupted "premium priced" competitors - BaseCamp exists despite O365 ToDo, project management tools exist despite O365 Planner, etc.

avianlyric 3y ago
The difference is that Office has almost complete market dominance in productivity suite space. Using that dominance in one market to crush competitors in an unrelated market is generally a big no-no. It doesn’t result in better products or better prices, it just allows a company to abuse more customers. You claim that Slack doesn’t offer enough value to justify its price, then why did people pay for before? Teams is cheaper, sure. But is that because it’s actually cheaper to operate, or is it because Office is a giant cash cow, and Microsoft are subsidising Teams pricing with Office profits? Teams is quite clearly a separate product to Word or Excel. Both Teams and Office represent entirely distinct products that are fully featured and can be used completely independently of each other without any real loss of functionality. There’s no reason why they should be bundled, Office was perfectly profitable without Teams for many decades. It not even vaguely the same as Excel adding Python support, Facebook adding chat, or Reddit adding image uploads.
- kiratp 3y ago
  > Using that dominance in one market to crush competitors in an unrelated market is generally a big no-no. Phone lines have always been part of a functional office. Not sure how you can argue that communications (voice, video, screen share) is not part of a modern, WFH enabled office suite.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - avianlyric 3y ago
    You know there are people out there with office jobs that need chat tools and not word right? Equally there are plenty of jobs that need word processing tools but not chat tools. Why should people be forced into by both together? And what does comms and phone lines have to do with Offices market dominance? Are you suggesting that Office should come with a mandatory bundled phone line as well?
winternewt 3y ago
Yes, that's why we have laws to promote healthy free-market competition over monopolies.
bratbag 3y ago
That's a bad situation to be improved upon. Not a standard to accept.

by 542458 3y ago

avianlyric 3y ago

The difference is that Office has almost complete market dominance in productivity suite space. Using that dominance in one market to crush competitors in an unrelated market is generally a big no-no. It doesn’t result in better products or better prices, it just allows a company to abuse more customers. You claim that Slack doesn’t offer enough value to justify its price, then why did people pay for before? Teams is cheaper, sure. But is that because it’s actually cheaper to operate, or is it because Office is a giant cash cow, and Microsoft are subsidising Teams pricing with Office profits? Teams is quite clearly a separate product to Word or Excel. Both Teams and Office represent entirely distinct products that are fully featured and can be used completely independently of each other without any real loss of functionality. There’s no reason why they should be bundled, Office was perfectly profitable without Teams for many decades. It not even vaguely the same as Excel adding Python support, Facebook adding chat, or Reddit adding image uploads.

kiratp 3y ago
> Using that dominance in one market to crush competitors in an unrelated market is generally a big no-no. Phone lines have always been part of a functional office. Not sure how you can argue that communications (voice, video, screen share) is not part of a modern, WFH enabled office suite.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- avianlyric 3y ago
  You know there are people out there with office jobs that need chat tools and not word right? Equally there are plenty of jobs that need word processing tools but not chat tools. Why should people be forced into by both together? And what does comms and phone lines have to do with Offices market dominance? Are you suggesting that Office should come with a mandatory bundled phone line as well?

winternewt 3y ago

Yes, that's why we have laws to promote healthy free-market competition over monopolies.

bratbag 3y ago

That's a bad situation to be improved upon. Not a standard to accept.