Live data from Hacker News

OpenAI should build Slack

latent.space

241–250 of 349 posts

Re: OpenAI should build Slack

#241
post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On that basis, Microsoft are also hampered by a lackluster chat client - Teams is atrocious. Slack is pretty much the only game in town that isn't bad (and even that needs native clients, because the UI is poor and not system-integrated).

I think I have this discussion on HN everytime Teams comes up but it really is a great piece of software for a typical office worker. File sharing is incredible. You get a SharePoint and collaborative editing in a seamless way. Video conf is great and work great with Teams compatible room booking system and room video material. The chat part barely matters. People don't use Teams to chat. It's a collaboration hub. Th…

File sharing using Scarepoint is incredible. Incredible bad, that is. Everything is stored in mssql server behind the scenes, in the most inefficient way you could imagine. Scarepoint is the opposite of seamless, number of wasted man-years on it must certainly be in the millions, if not billions. Its ”wiki” sucks. It’s bad software that not even ms themselves want to touch, that’s why many of their other server softwares have migrated away from using it.

Re: OpenAI should build Slack

#242
post #172
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe in 2020. Teams is the defacto IM app for enterprise now. It may not be to your liking, but most workplaces don't need apps to constantly be adding new features. They need videoconferencing, chat, meeting recording and AI transcription and note-taking. All synced with everyone's Outlook calendars and authenticated by the same SSO used org-wide. Teams has had all of those for years.

Only because they use Office and Teams is bundled, everyone using it that's heard of Slack wants to be using Slack instead.

Honestly prefer teams over slack. Slack is good at text threads, while I'd still choose Teams for calls and meetings.

Re: OpenAI should build Slack

#243
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand why Gemini is not better integrated into Google Docs. I can’t transfer results into docs, it can’t manipulate existing docs. I can’t even rule out that I’m doing something wrong somehow. But it’s just frustrating to see that the teams inside of Google don’t work well together.

I mean Gemini is basically brand new... They're clearly working towards deeper integration.

The Gemini branding is over a year old, and google has been working on this for ages. They need to vibe code faster!

Re: OpenAI should build Slack

#244
post #121

Google should build slack. Its a travesty how incredibly good their google workspace suite of tools is, and then google chat is what sits between it all. If it wasn't for the fact that google bungled an internal communication tool so badly, slack wouldn't even have to exist. For the life of me I cannot understand why they after a decade, has let slack and teams become basically a duopoly in this space. Source: I use…

While the current incarnation of Google Chat has indeed been steadily improving, Google has a lot, and I mean a lot , to make up for: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-... (2021, as the URL says) And it's not just messaging. Google has a decades-long history of abandoning apps that don't make them billions, which means no-one with memory trusts them. Especially in their current "AI-everythin…

> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-... (2021, as the URL says)

This article never fails to crack me up! Arstechnica.com at its best.

Re: OpenAI should build Slack

#245

There's already Zulip, Mattermost, and many others. Building a chat application should be considered a tar pit problem IMO. A lot of success relies on network effects and familiarity, and the product looks deceptively simple. It's unlikely you can build one that is better than Slack without years of investment. Even if you do, it's still an uphill battle.

Zulip is awesome \m/

I recently started looking into Zulip and while I can see that it is a complete product its mobile UI is so cluttered and funky I don’t understand how anyone could use it. The desktop web UI seems OK but try this on your phone: https://zulip.com/new/demo/

They have the iOS Safari problem with the keyboard and body scroll, tiny icons, super busy UI. I was hoping to help some folks move off Discord to something else and Zulip is not what I would volunteer to do support for when the users are not techies. Heck, as a techie my eyes glaze over looking at it. I really wish it was slicker and more usable but it simply isn’t.

Re: OpenAI should build Slack

#246
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand why Gemini is not better integrated into Google Docs. I can’t transfer results into docs, it can’t manipulate existing docs. I can’t even rule out that I’m doing something wrong somehow. But it’s just frustrating to see that the teams inside of Google don’t work well together.

I mean Gemini is basically brand new... They're clearly working towards deeper integration.

Brand New? It's over two years old now. For a company that brags about its cloud infrastructure and developer tooling, I find it incredibly ironic that Gemini has worse integration with Google docs than ChatGPT and Claude.

Re: OpenAI should build Slack

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean Gemini is basically brand new... They're clearly working towards deeper integration.

Brand New? It's over two years old now. For a company that brags about its cloud infrastructure and developer tooling, I find it incredibly ironic that Gemini has worse integration with Google docs than ChatGPT and Claude.

Yes, for a company the size of Google, a two year old product is effectively brand new.

It is not ironic whatsoever that much smaller startups in much more precarious positions relative to the incumbent move very quickly to integrate with the incumbent.

Re: OpenAI should build Slack

#249
post #121

Google should build slack. Its a travesty how incredibly good their google workspace suite of tools is, and then google chat is what sits between it all. If it wasn't for the fact that google bungled an internal communication tool so badly, slack wouldn't even have to exist. For the life of me I cannot understand why they after a decade, has let slack and teams become basically a duopoly in this space. Source: I use…

Hangout was perfect. And they killed it.

Re: OpenAI should build Slack

#250
post #121

Google should build slack. Its a travesty how incredibly good their google workspace suite of tools is, and then google chat is what sits between it all. If it wasn't for the fact that google bungled an internal communication tool so badly, slack wouldn't even have to exist. For the life of me I cannot understand why they after a decade, has let slack and teams become basically a duopoly in this space. Source: I use…

There might be an institutional block in Google due to the way that Google Wave was received. Google has tried (a few times) to get chat to work. It's never quite lived up to expectations (or hype in the case of Wave). Knowing their history, I can see why they'd want to avoid trying to take on that market again. It's difficult to get enough traction with users to make it a successful product. Not impossible, but it's…

> Google has tried (a few times) to get chat to work

The original gmail-integrated gchat/google-talk first released in 2005 was fabulous. If they had just kept developing it instead of repeatedly creating a new one, they would easily be the undisputed leaders in this space.

Post reply on HN