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

OpenAI should build Slack

latent.space

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–349 of 349 posts

Re: OpenAI should build Slack

#341

Post by surajrmal »

overfeed wrote: post #139
uptownfunk wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally it is the biggest missing piece of their ecosystem and would complete their offering so nicely. Get a pm and 3 engineers and vibe it out

> Get a pm and 3 engineers and vibe it out Google has been stuck in exactly this loop for over a decade without going all-in on a single application. They seem to launch a new chat app every couple of years with not quite as many features as the prior chat application, and slowly add features until it's time for it to be replaced by newer one still.

The current chat app is decidedly the victor. It's been around since 2021 and there is no sign of a replacement. Google messages remains separate for person chat, but arguably texting and work chats occupy different spaces, just as Whatsapp and Slack do. Folks joke about chat features also making their way into YouTube and Google Photos, but the fact they are not forcing you into the other chat ecosystems is something a lot of users strongly prefer. The 2010s was definitely an awkward period for Google but arguably that was just watching them fumble through social via Google+ and everything else was a reaction to that. 2020s has been a lot more focused with strategy actually focusing on existing products instead of spinning up new ones (outside of AI)

Re: OpenAI should build Slack

#342

Post by rchaud »

Our_Benefactors wrote: post #145
rchaud wrote: 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.

> Teams is the defacto IM app for enterprise now. Slack has more mindshare

For the 1000+ headcount companies who sit outside the Silicon Valley webdev/software dev world, it doesn't. Silicon Valley looks at these as "products". Purchasing managers see these as "commodities" that need to be interoperable with the rest of their stack first.

Re: OpenAI should build Slack

#343

Post by waffletower »

flopsamjetsam wrote: post #316
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Such a great article. I love a good postmortem. I also had no idea of the chequered history of Google's messaging apps. I'd heard some of the names before, but being an iMessage and WhatsApp user, I'd just stuck with those mostly.

It seems that the Messages (iMessage) product manager(s) have never even seen Slack. So difficult to go from such a fun product at work to bland and awkward for the rest of my connected life. Seems completely backwards.

Re: OpenAI should build Slack

#344

Post by waffletower »

meekaaku wrote: post #204
echelon wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we should cheer on one of the largest companies in the world to build a product to get them even more enterprise stranglehold. The praise for this monopoly is misdirected. Every single one of you, unless you're a significant GOOG shareholder, should be wanting for antitrust breakup of Google. They're putting pressure on your wages and other investments, and they're contributing to a ceiling for other st…

I dont get this idea of breaking big companies up is inherently a good thing. As a non-American, I think the breakup of AT&T/Bell Labs was a mistake. The world is yet to create a lab as innovative as Bell Labs. Current Google only comes even close with their far out projects(that dont directly make money) such as their quantum computing/deepmind/boston dynamics(when google had them) Besides, if one does break up goog…

> The world is yet to create a lab as innovative as Bell Labs.

This comment is as if "Attention is all you need" was never written and never funded by Google, and the cascade of related research that it inspired inside Google alone isn't considered either. The other Google accomplishments mentioned seem to be filtered to earlier than 2018 as well.

Re: OpenAI should build Slack

#345

Post by ltbarcly3 »

wiseowise wrote: post #303
ltbarcly3 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't how you use online chat. Somehow people did fine with IRC for decades without threads. I'm sorry you can't manage your own information flow or configure your own client and have to embarrass yourself to make other people to organize it for you.

What else should I do for you? There are hundreds unique snowflakes that think their message is what I should see - I don’t. Stop littering in a public space and behave like a grownup.

Again, your ability to consume information you find useful is not my job to manage. Be a grownup and a professional, figure it out. Or constantly whine at people and be unbearable. Totally up to you.

Re: OpenAI should build Slack

#346

Post by mbreese »

haute_cuisine wrote: post #184
mbreese wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could also look at it as: in order for a Slack competitor to compete with Slack's network effects, the new program will need to offer an easy way to extend chat workspaces with external collaborators. It's not impossible, but it does make Slack's moat explicitly clear.

The problem here is that companies artificially limit integrations, so it's impossible to exchange messages between different providers like how email works.

I’ve always thought that the proper competitor to Slack/Twitter/etc… was a protocol not another service. Protocols enable competition, services just shift the market to another service.

Re: OpenAI should build Slack

#347

Post by jedberg »

swyx wrote: post #107
erlicai wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the article was written by AI I guess, but I think there's some human editing to it and the OP is the editor

author here, entire editorial is entirely human written

Then what did the (now removed) disclaimer refer to?

Re: OpenAI should build Slack

#348

Post by lunias »

If I worked exclusively with technical people, then I wouldn't need to use Slack (or Teams, Webex, Jabber, etc). I can't ever see myself paying for an application like that.

Re: OpenAI should build Slack

#349

Post by haute_cuisine »

EGreg wrote: post #314
haute_cuisine wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's most likely already installed when you send an invite to someone and they already used to how it works. It just works most of the time, well, besides slightly buggy text editor and almost non-working calls.

But so what, browsers are installed too and can load arbitrary websites. Which can implement all that stuff too. And threaded forums like Discourse are far better.

You still need to register and put your credit card.
Post reply on HN