Slack Files EU Competition Complaint Against Microsoft
Dear Slack,<p>You're selling something that isn't a product. Standalone chat is a feature, and you won't win against a full product offering unless you drastically reduce your prices. You need to get acquired (by Google or Facebook), because I don't think you can innovate an office productivity suite fast enough to compete. And that's clearly the enterprise puzzle piece where chat fits into nicely.<p>Microsoft isn't being anti-competitive here. Out of all the FAAMG, they're the one that least resembles a monopoly.<p>You're struggling because you are selling <i>chat</i> as a service. Something that has been free since IRC and AOL Instant Messenger. Something any fifteen year old can write with web sockets. You built a pretty (through opinions vary) version with access controls.<p>You had a chance to build a moat and make acquisitions to fortify your position, <i>but you didn't do it</i>. You invited competition from Microsoft and instead of doing something, you rewrote your Electron layout six times and made a WYSIWYG that everyone hated.<p>You had four or five years to do something. You had a chance most startup companies dream of. But here we are. You squandered that chance while you reveled in hubris.<p>You're going to get eaten, and there's not much you can do about it now.