Why Microsoft Wants Discord • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Microsoft Wants Discord

#31

Post by causalmodels » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 4:53 PM UTC

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #10

gautamcgoel wrote: post #5

Is seems to me the top five software companies are on a never-ending quest to buy up every other promising software company. GitHub, Twitch, Mojang, Instagram, WhatsApp... I'd love to see a few smaller software companies refuse to get bought up and instead cultivate an independent mindset. Otherwise, we end up with a world completely dominated by Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook.

>I'd love to see a few smaller software companies refuse to get bought up and instead cultivate an independent mindset. Didn't Oakley sunglasses try something similar when Luxottica first tried to buy them and then Luxottica managed to ruin them and ended up buying them much cheaper? And hasn't Microsoft already done the same to a large number of startups?

Example #1: Teams is currently eating Slack.

Re: Why Microsoft Wants Discord

#32

Post by simonh » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 4:53 PM UTC

rbtprograms wrote: post #17

gautamcgoel wrote: post #5

Is seems to me the top five software companies are on a never-ending quest to buy up every other promising software company. GitHub, Twitch, Mojang, Instagram, WhatsApp... I'd love to see a few smaller software companies refuse to get bought up and instead cultivate an independent mindset. Otherwise, we end up with a world completely dominated by Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook.

There are at least a couple out there. Snapchat turned down a $3B offer from Facebook to stay independent, and I believe Twitter have turned down similar offers through the years.

Dropbox as well, they're not doing too bad either with a market cap of $11bn. That's quite impressive considering pretty much everybody has developed a competing service, and they must have known that would be inevitable.

Re: Why Microsoft Wants Discord

#33

Post by aeturnum » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 4:54 PM UTC

p-sharma wrote: post #22

I don't get it. What's the benefit of buying a community? It's not like you can really control what the community does or thinks, you may can control which ads they see but how else do you make money with this community? > so Microsoft migrating Discord over to Azure would be seen as a big win for its cloud ambitions. What should this prove? That Azure can run a big service like Discord? I don't think Microsoft has t…

I don't know how things look from microsoft's point of view, but I see lots of "nice to have" aspects of being in charge of one of the popular social platforms.

Lots of people cut their programmatic teeth building simple things that interact with these platforms. It would be nice for Microsoft if every teenager building a bot to play fart noises on discord does so on Azure™ building with Microsoft Visual Studio Code™. The fact that AWS has been the standard "go to" place for people to get cloud servers up and running has been nice for them.

Also, it creates opportunities for these "cool" companies to write technical blog posts for your stuff. I think Discord has helped Elixir rise in popularity - I'm sure Microsoft would like to see something like their "how Discord scaled to 5m concurrent users" for C# (or whatever stack they want to promote).

Now, I have no idea how big a deal this would be. I really doubt it's a $10b big deal. I agree that "the community" isn't a reliable factor. If anything, I think this purchase puts the community at risk. People like that Discord is a small company that needs to care about how good its servers are. If they suddenly are owned by a giant company that might care less, people might look around for alternatives.

Re: Why Microsoft Wants Discord

#34

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 4:54 PM UTC

pixelbath wrote: post #30

flerchin wrote: post #11

Embrace Extend Extinguish.

This isn't really what this is. "Embrace, extend, extinguish" is the idea that Microsoft would embrace open standards just enough to add their own proprietary extensions, then once theirs is the dominant platform, drop the remaining open support and kill the competitor. This is just...buying a company.

[deleted]

Re: Why Microsoft Wants Discord

#35

Post by Aerroon » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

ChrisRR wrote: post #24

gautamcgoel wrote: post #5

Is seems to me the top five software companies are on a never-ending quest to buy up every other promising software company. GitHub, Twitch, Mojang, Instagram, WhatsApp... I'd love to see a few smaller software companies refuse to get bought up and instead cultivate an independent mindset. Otherwise, we end up with a world completely dominated by Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook.

It's unlikely. I suspect many people start businesses with the intention of doing what they love and making a decent living out of it. Then the bigger the company gets, the further removed you are from your original dream and when someone waves a big pile of money in your face, it's a very tempting offer

Another factor is that you may believe the larger company can take the idea you are passionate about further.

Re: Why Microsoft Wants Discord

#36

Post by Spivak » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

causalmodels wrote: post #31

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'd love to see a few smaller software companies refuse to get bought up and instead cultivate an independent mindset. Didn't Oakley sunglasses try something similar when Luxottica first tried to buy them and then Luxottica managed to ruin them and ended up buying them much cheaper? And hasn't Microsoft already done the same to a large number of startups?

Example #1: Teams is currently eating Slack.

Yep. It's not enough to have a better product when Teams comes "free" for a lot of orgs.

Re: Why Microsoft Wants Discord

#37

Post by sho_hn » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #10

gautamcgoel wrote: post #5

Is seems to me the top five software companies are on a never-ending quest to buy up every other promising software company. GitHub, Twitch, Mojang, Instagram, WhatsApp... I'd love to see a few smaller software companies refuse to get bought up and instead cultivate an independent mindset. Otherwise, we end up with a world completely dominated by Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook.

>I'd love to see a few smaller software companies refuse to get bought up and instead cultivate an independent mindset. Didn't Oakley sunglasses try something similar when Luxottica first tried to buy them and then Luxottica managed to ruin them and ended up buying them much cheaper? And hasn't Microsoft already done the same to a large number of startups?

> And hasn't Microsoft already done the same to a large number of startups?

Not just startups. They tried to acquire Nokia's handset business and initially failed. Stephen Elop (ex-MS) was installed as new CEO via investor pressure, Nokia abandoned their promising Linux-based phones and changed direction to Windows Mobile and then it was acquired after all. And failed.

Elop has, of course, denied having been a trojan horse for Microsoft at Nokia after the initial failed acquisiton attempt. Nokia's share price and profit lowered considerably during his tenure as a CEO, making it much cheaper to acquire.

Resisting acquisition can be very challenging, and takes a lot of energy and time.

Re: Why Microsoft Wants Discord

#38

Post by jehlakj » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 4:57 PM UTC

I’ve always been curious about this. If they sell it, could they just cash out everything and walk away and start a new project? It can’t be as simple as that right?

Re: Why Microsoft Wants Discord

#39

Post by notsureaboutpg » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 4:58 PM UTC

p-sharma wrote: post #22

I don't get it. What's the benefit of buying a community? It's not like you can really control what the community does or thinks, you may can control which ads they see but how else do you make money with this community? > so Microsoft migrating Discord over to Azure would be seen as a big win for its cloud ambitions. What should this prove? That Azure can run a big service like Discord? I don't think Microsoft has t…

Maybe by buying developer / enterprise goodwill with acquisitions of GitHub and LinkedIn (and now Discord), they're hoping those developers will be more likely to build for MS products, Windows, etc?

Maybe the tech and the team behind Discord (an app which runs far better than Microsoft Teams while offering voice / real time chat, multiple organizations, integrations, bots, etc.) are valuable to Microsoft to utilize that knowledge across their other products and services?

Re: Why Microsoft Wants Discord

#40

Post by Leary » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 4:58 PM UTC

jtew396 wrote: post #9

gautamcgoel wrote: post #5

Is seems to me the top five software companies are on a never-ending quest to buy up every other promising software company. GitHub, Twitch, Mojang, Instagram, WhatsApp... I'd love to see a few smaller software companies refuse to get bought up and instead cultivate an independent mindset. Otherwise, we end up with a world completely dominated by Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook.

Unfortunately the smaller companies don't have a choice. Many acquisitions from Big Tech come with a threat - sell your company or we will move into your space and tank your valuation.

discord is too big to be killed this easily. any msft copycat will be like facebook trying to kill snapchat