Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Source: Microsoft mulled an $8B bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 285 posts

Re: Source: Microsoft mulled an $8B bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead

#41

Post by lmm »

chollida1 wrote: post #7

I wonder if the outcome would have been different if Slack was incorporated outside of the US where Microsoft could use some of its non domiciled cash on the acquisition? http://www.ibtimes.com/microsoft-admits-keeping-92-billion-o... Also interesting to think that Slack could be worth so much. Look at ICQ, Microsoft instant messenger, etc. It seems as though slack like tools get eclipsed every 5-10 years as a new ge…

Frankly Slack's success is the utter failure of every alternative on the UX side. MSN messenger was perhaps wrong-footed by the shift to multi-device, but none of the other tools have such an excuse. It's not a generational thing, it's an incredible level of, there's no other word, incompetence on the part of the makers of major messaging software (Skype in particular).

Re: Source: Microsoft mulled an $8B bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead

#42

Post by JustSomeNobody »

gshulegaard wrote: post #36
chollida1 wrote: post #7

I wonder if the outcome would have been different if Slack was incorporated outside of the US where Microsoft could use some of its non domiciled cash on the acquisition? http://www.ibtimes.com/microsoft-admits-keeping-92-billion-o... Also interesting to think that Slack could be worth so much. Look at ICQ, Microsoft instant messenger, etc. It seems as though slack like tools get eclipsed every 5-10 years as a new ge…

> It seems as though slack like tools get eclipsed every 5-10 years as a new generation comes along with a new favorite tool. You've definitely got a point there. Although I do want to mention that part of the reason Slack eclipsed other tools was, in part, its Websocket based protocol. They have created a fairly complete unified messaging application because of it (IMO). They were the first movers in the area. I don…

10 Years? Hmmm... That is a very long time.

Re: Source: Microsoft mulled an $8B bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead

#43

Post by nickik »

Even more focus on Skype? Great, maybe they can break it even more. Every chat client, developed by 2 guys in their free time works far better the skype chat. Message not delivered, hundrets of new messages when a new client logs in, annyoing link replacment with pictures, group chats not working, adding people to calls not working and so much more.

Fucking horrorshow

Re: Source: Microsoft mulled an $8B bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead

#44

Post by pcmaffey »

The real question is, would Stewart B. take the offer?

Anyone who cares about their product knows a sale to MS is a death knell for innovation. Becoming a hit like Slack is such a rare opportunity. I mean, why are you in this business if not for a chance to build a transformative platform? Which is what Slack has right now, a chance.

Re: Source: Microsoft mulled an $8B bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead

#45

Post by zyxley »

ue_ wrote: post #20
chollida1 wrote: post #7

I wonder if the outcome would have been different if Slack was incorporated outside of the US where Microsoft could use some of its non domiciled cash on the acquisition? http://www.ibtimes.com/microsoft-admits-keeping-92-billion-o... Also interesting to think that Slack could be worth so much. Look at ICQ, Microsoft instant messenger, etc. It seems as though slack like tools get eclipsed every 5-10 years as a new ge…

>get eclipsed every 5-10 years as a new generation comes along with a new favorite tool I wonder if this rule holds just as much for IRC - for most FOSS projects, IRC is the go-to choice, and it's been that way for a long time.

Many new FOSS projects are now using Slack instead of IRC, with a variety of methods for auto-inviting members of the public instead of Slack's intent of manually managing users.

Another popular one now is Discord, which is Slack-like but anecdotally better for large sets of users because of a more robust admin/permissions scheme.

Re: Source: Microsoft mulled an $8B bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead

#46

Post by dceddia »

Coding_Cat wrote: post #40
abawany wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me Skype has been great for years. Sure the Windows Store version was unusable but switching back to the regular version fixed issues for me. I saw it used at my last workplace to great savings - they used it to speak to their offshore person for free. We switched to Slack there but Skype continued to be used for voice communications. Microsoft also owns GroupMe (www.groupme.com) and that solution has been pretty…

That doesn't sound so much as Skype being good as VOIP being good too you. Skype itself in my experience, and all those I know, has been abhorrent. Chat messages appearing out of order and once literally months later, incorrect status indicators, automatic noise cancelling messes up the volume sometimes (it seems to happen when the signal/noise plummets for a bit) forcing you to recall to get usable audio levels agai…

Pretty sure Skype for Business (at least on OS X) is a rebranded Lync client. In fact, on OS X, it's not even rebranded ;)

Re: Source: Microsoft mulled an $8B bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead

#47

Post by bluedino »

pmlnr wrote: post #18
chollida1 wrote: post #7

I wonder if the outcome would have been different if Slack was incorporated outside of the US where Microsoft could use some of its non domiciled cash on the acquisition? http://www.ibtimes.com/microsoft-admits-keeping-92-billion-o... Also interesting to think that Slack could be worth so much. Look at ICQ, Microsoft instant messenger, etc. It seems as though slack like tools get eclipsed every 5-10 years as a new ge…

IRC is still alive ;)

It's just a protocol. Like HTTP, FTP...

It's not a client. It's not one companies servers. It's not anything like AOL IM, ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, PowWow...

Re: Source: Microsoft mulled an $8B bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead

#48

Post by douche »

justinv wrote: post #25
reitanqild wrote: post #10

> Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and CEO Satya Nadella were among those unconvinced by the idea, with Gates pushing instead to add more features into Skype to make it more competitive with Slack in the business market, our source says. I'd say fix it first. Somehow the Skype name has gone from being an asset to being a liability to the point where I cannot understand why they renamed Lync to "Skype for business".

Agree. Especially when you actually open "Skype for Business" it says "Microsoft Lync" at the top. It's a mess.

They've finally fixed this with the last update to the Skype for Business client.

It's still a huge clusterfuck of a rebranding. The two clients are just barely compatible, and it's a huge mess when you're building a Skype for Business tool, and the users think they can use regular Skype to do anything with it.

Hopefully "investing in Skype" is a code word for building out an API for Office 365 Skype integrations that actually works. They've only been promising it for two or three years.

Re: Source: Microsoft mulled an $8B bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead

#49

Post by nrjames »

yeukhon wrote: post #28
ue_ wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>get eclipsed every 5-10 years as a new generation comes along with a new favorite tool I wonder if this rule holds just as much for IRC - for most FOSS projects, IRC is the go-to choice, and it's been that way for a long time.

IRC is my favorite, but IRC is bad for company, because you have to manage your own IRC server (you don't want to host your company stuff on freenode, do you). Also, IRC doesn't come with any integration with third party tools. Unless you have a very willing hacker willing to build the integration from scratch, IRC is bad. Not that you would never find a use case to write custom bot on Slack for your need, but I imag…

In an enterprise environment, Slack is sometimes considered bad because all of the company data is not under the company's control. I seriously doubt that the company I work for ever would go all in on Slack, precisely for that reason.

Re: Source: Microsoft mulled an $8B bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead

#50

Post by Phlarp »

reitanqild wrote: post #13
SeanDav wrote: post #6

I would be a fan of Skype, if they did not route everything through government spyware.

While I'm not sure that's what they do they DID get caught red-handed a couple of years ago snooping on urls sent over Skype.

"route everything through government surveillance" is perhaps a bit too blunt, but let's not forget that Microsoft was the founding member of the PRISM program.

And Prism or no Prism-- Skype was a $1bn present from Microsoft to the intelligence community. Even if they never snooped on anything (we know they have) they did re-engineer skype in a manner that allows it to be subject to more traditional CALEA trap and trace techniques, as well a numerous side channel attacks and traffic interception. The "secret sauce" of Skype in the very beginning was P2P connections, which MSFT immediately removed.

Post reply on HN