10 ms·

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

329 points by crsmith 11y ago

bigpoppa 11y ago
a bargain if you ask me
sirmike_ 11y ago
Please no, stay away. I thought those kinda days at MSFT were over ...
untog 11y ago
Sad thing is that Slack would be a far better fit for Microsoft, given that it's primarily business-focused. I've used Skype for work but only because it's the only option we've had, not because anyone actually wants to use it. Hangouts and Slack are so much more business-friendly. That said, I think MS made the right call given that they already own Skype. It could be good - great, even - if they actually tried. They don't need a Slack acquisition for that, but they probably could do with rebuilding every native app they have from the ground up, every single one is awful.
- moheeb 11y ago
  I don't understand why Skype is so crappy. Most Microsoft software is at the very least average, with several products being industry standards. Why is Skype so different?
  - abawany 11y ago
    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 cool as well. I was surprised to find how focused Microsoft has quietly become on messaging products.
    - Coding_Cat 11y ago
      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 again, multi-platform support is a joke, having to delete %appdata% every other update in order to be able to log in, intrusive ads, a lack of audio device at startup seems to freeze up any windows audio afterwards until Skype is killed (This could be Windows itself ofc, but it's both Microsoft)... As an aside, this is regular old Skype, I've heard it being said that "Skype for Business" is a completely different program.
      - dceddia 11y ago
        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 ;)
      - abawany 11y ago
        I remember performing the periodic AppData cleanup in 2009/2010 but haven't had to do that in the last few years. It was during that time that the chat delay issues were very common as well. From my point of view, while the Microsoft takeover and remake initially brought difficulties with login, the recent versions were not too bad apart from the Windows 8 Store version mess. But that is just my experience. While I personally don't use the chat functionality that often anymore, the few times I have used it (say when an interview was being done over Skype), it worked ok but I realize that is hardly a high-use model. I agree that other messaging solutions such as Hangouts, HipChat, Slack, GroupMe, and etc. appear to perform much more seamlessly without needing to be aware of idiosyncrasies.
        Coding_Cat 11y ago
        For me their still the occasional problem. Perhaps it is related to Windows 7?
  - untog 11y ago
    I've always assumed that the acquisition failed horribly. The apps are still the same code as pre-acquisition, and I'll bet a lot of the original developers left pretty sharpish. It's quite possible that the original codebase is an absolute train wreck, it's not as if it was ever an amazing app, after all. I wonder if MS acquired Skype today (i.e. "The New Microsoft") whether they'd have been more successful.
    - Splines 11y ago
      Skype has a ton of legacy (just look at this list: http://www.skype.com/en/download-skype/skype-for-computer/ http://www.skype.com/en/download-skype/skype-for-computer/) - supporting that can't be easy. WhatsApp will probably face similar problems in 5-10 years, if they want to maintain compatibility with the myriad of clients they have in the wild.
      - aylons 11y ago
        > WhatsApp will probably face similar problems in 5-10 years, if they want to maintain compatibility with the myriad of clients they have in the wild. They don't. They just announced dropping support for Blackberry and S60.
  - j_koreth 11y ago
    Oddly enough Skype got bad under Microsoft's ownership too
    - ansjun 11y ago
      Microsoft has a proven track record on buying and ruining perfectly fine startups/products. Skype, Yammer etc.
  - mindo 11y ago
    Because they bought it and as with everything they buy, they milk it until its dead.
  - CaptSpify 11y ago
    Agreed that it's weird. IME, Microsoft is always best when they have healthy competition. They only get crappy when they are the monopoly, so why is it different for skype?
  - minionslave 11y ago
    Every software project is maintained by different teams, sometimes different departments. For example the Office team is managed differently from the Bing team. Just like the Visual Studio team will have a different management from the Skype one. It is possible that the skype team has a different standard, different priorities imposed by the managers.
  - WorldMaker 11y ago
    On the consumer (not "for Business") side of things, I think some of it is the long running experiment to make Skype a platform and merge said platform deeper into the broader ecosystem of apps. With Windows 10 I think we're finally starting to see some of that shake out and some of that improve. It's very interesting seeing the seamless merger of Skype into the Messaging, People, and Phone apps in Windows 10. Having finally figured out the new Windows 10 Skype Video app I realized that I could uninstall the classic desktop app and the Windows 8 version of Skype mobile that is (weirdly) still in the Windows Store on mobile as if it is still a useful app (and in which case it is not), unlike its short-lived tablet/desktop counterpart. You can still see some of the uneven edges: the reason I had to figure out the Skype Video app was that it is the only one that currently supports accepting or making Skype contact requests, before you can link them in People. (I presume that sort of functionality should eventually merge in the People app more directly?) Also, there's still that slight friction between traditional Skype accounts and using Microsoft accounts for Skype that I'm unsure if there will ever be a clean fix. I think that the "Skype Video" should be named something like Videophone to better align with brand-less Messaging, Phone app names, but that's a marketing quibble. I do like the way that SMS messaging and Skype messaging interleave in the Messaging app now. It's nice having only one app for that. I wish it supported merging in Facebook's Messenger as well, but I realize that won't happen for many, many reasons. As for Skype for Business, I think it's been solid since its Lync-branded days. I'm curious if they can get the sort of "platform leverage" we are seeing on the consumer side of things, but it doesn't necessarily need it. If they make it more Slack-like, that could be interesting.
- bad_user 11y ago
  I really hate Skype, but unfortunately Skype has no alternative for group audio / video calls, with the occasional screen sharing. Hangouts seemed promising, but it's worse. But I can tell you that at our company we are giving up on Slack, but not on Skype. > rebuilding every native app they have from the ground up, every single one is awful On Mac OS X, which is what I use, it's acceptable. I found it to be fairly acceptable on iOS as well, though you can't rely on receiving group chat messages in time (in all honesty, I think that's a feature :)). I don't use Windows, I imagine it's fine there. On Linux it's super awful. I have hope for the new web interface to replace my needs for a Linux client, but the web interface is awful as well. On Android last year it leaked my battery like crazy. Nowadays it's maybe better in battery usage, but I had problems with my microphone - if I mute and then un-mute, then it can happen for the mic to not recover and I have to reinitiate the call. It's super annoying. My personal feeling is that Microsoft does not invest enough resources in these clients. On the primary platforms they always seem to be one or two bugs away from being OK. On Linux it's like the same client from 5 years ago and it still works, but it never got any love from Microsoft. So I think they simply didn't give a crap, hoping to lure people into Lync or something. Which is too bad, because Skype always had great potential, it still has.
  - recursive 11y ago
    Hangouts works far better for me than Skype. It just works. With skype, I struggle to even create video conversation. I remember one fateful day when I tried 4 different devices with skype installed, and had a complete failure to get any of them to work.
    - bad_user 11y ago
      It depends on your location I guess. I'm from Romania and travel and speak with people mostly in Europe. I've had the same failure you mention with Hangouts. And video quality was never OK whenever I tried, with frames being dropped and so on. Whereas Skype has been OK even on my mobile 3G/4G connection and I'm a heavy user. In fairness, Skype had a couple of major network outages. Maybe you hit one of those.
    - 11y ago
a2tech 11y ago
And Skype will continue to be terrible. Just installed Office 2013 with its included 'Skype for Business' and boy does it look terrible. Its got a distinct MSN Messenger from the early 2000's vibe going on. Lots of buttons, very bright color choices (lots of white and bright blue).
- nickpeterson 11y ago
  To be fair, that is rebadged Lync, not really skype. And yes, lync is terrible.
- pmlnr 11y ago
  If I could get the old skype back, with that 2000s vibe, I wouldn't have any issues with it.
SeanDav 11y ago
I would be a fan of Skype, if they did not route everything through government spyware.
- reitanqild 11y ago
  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.
  - Phlarp 11y ago
    "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.
    - Zekio 11y ago
      Isn't skype still P2P?? otherwise why would it have an option to disallow P2P between you and people you don't know?
      - pmlnr 11y ago
        http://www.zdnet.com/article/skype-ditched-peer-to-peer-supernodes-for-scalability-not-surveillance/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/skype-ditched-peer-to-peer-supe...
  - criddell 11y ago
    I don't know if I would characterize what they were doing as snooping. Is Google snooping when GMail does a keyword scan of your email? IIRC, Microsoft was loading the URL to look for malware.
chollida1 11y ago
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-offshore-avoid-paying-29-billion-us-taxes-1665938 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 generation comes along with a new favorite tool. I'd be interested in hearing from someone who would argue that slack will be a dominate communication tool in 5-8 years time and still exist in a meaningful way in 10 years time.
- chishaku 11y ago
  > ICQ, Microsoft instant messenger ... slack like tools... I think people too often overlook Slack's integrations. Yes, Slack is "just" chat or "just" a glorified IRC. Or is it? I don't know how long it would take me to integrate my Stripe, Github, Trello, and Zendesk streams into IRC to the point where I could set it and forget it. I think for business users at least, using this type of setup _effectively_ could make it hard to move away.
  - baddox 11y ago
    Slack seems to have mostly eclipsed Hipchat, at least among Silicon Valley startups, but integrations probably weren't a huge factor in that. Slack does have a nicer flow for integrations, but Hipchat worked quite well (and actually had much-missed features like customizing the background color of messages; it's unfathomable how Slack could still not have this feature).
    - Klathmon 11y ago
      >it's unfathomable how Slack could still not have this feature I hear this saying a lot, and every time I just can't take it seriously. This is the first time I've ever heard of someone wanting customizable background colors for messages on a messaging platform. It's just not something I or anyone I know about cares about. I just can't see how that would be considered a high importance feature by anyone.
sand500 11y ago
Switched from Skype to Discord for gaming. No regrets.
- Redoubts 11y ago
  I'm pretty impressed with it too. Nice UI and good functionality.
- Syrup-tan 11y ago
  The unofficial API community is also really great, and there are a plethora of libraries to choose from to get something working quickly. https://blog.discordapp.com/the-robot-revolution-has-unofficially-begun/ https://blog.discordapp.com/the-robot-revolution-has-unoffic...
- GFischer 11y ago
  Lots of support for Discord here on HN. I saw some posts mentioning that a relatively large project had switched to it for support (Reactiflux http://www.reactiflux.com/ http://www.reactiflux.com/ ). Edit:googled the project
mtgx 11y ago
Has it even recovered $1 billion in profit from the $8.5 billion it paid for Skype itself 5 years ago? And Skype's best days may be behind it. I wonder if they'll do another big write-off in 3 years like they did for aQuantive and Nokia.
reitanqild 11y ago
> 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".
- justinv 11y ago
  Agree. Especially when you actually open "Skype for Business" it says "Microsoft Lync" at the top. It's a mess.
  - douche 11y ago
    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.
    - GFischer 11y ago
      They have regularly bought out companies in that space (last one was Ray Ozzie's Talko, in December, and they specifically said "Talko was acquired to help fuel future innovation in Skype and Skype for Business. As part of the Skype team, we’ll leverage Talko’s technology and the many things we’ve learned during its design and development."). Let's hope they actually benefit from those. http://betanews.com/2015/12/21/microsoft-cops-talko-for-skype-stuff/ http://betanews.com/2015/12/21/microsoft-cops-talko-for-skyp...
      - GFischer 11y ago
        I think the meaning got lost here :( . I was genuinely hoping for Skype & Microsoft to benefit, it was not sarcastic or anything, and I thought it was relevant information.
nakedrobot2 11y ago
Skype is horrible. I'm sorry but it is such an awful tool. It crashes, it loses my old conversations, group calls never work. It is truly horrible, the codebase is a rotting pile of garbage that will never be fixed. I am glad that Slack will not be eaten by Microsoft. I hope they really do implement voice soon.
- charlieflowers 11y ago
  > I hope they really do implement voice soon. They have! It's in beta, but we've been using it at my workplace for 2 days now. Audio only so far. Better audio quality than anything else we use (appear.in, lync, hangouts, among others). Integrated into slack, so you click a button in a channel to start a call anyone in the channel can join. Nice.
- ant6n 11y ago
  And the constant forced password resets -- and then you can't reuse passwords, so there are even more password resets. Of course you sign in after a password reset, you're greeted with another password reset. Most recently, Skype told me I've lost control of my gmail account an invited me to create a hotmail account to link with my Skype account instead. Wtf?
sosuke 11y ago
Why not build one? Why keep trying to lift Skype to this purpose? It seems if they really wanted to they could make a good product.
- cissou 11y ago
  it could cost more than 8bn to build one, and would take time too. Slack is right there, already built.
  - AngrySkillzz 11y ago
    If it costs you more than $8bil to write a chat app then you're doing something wrong.
    - trott 11y ago
      I'd like to know what people think developing something like Slack should cost, and why MS thought $8e9 was a potentially reasonable valuation.
      - st3v3r 11y ago
        Keep in mind that the acquisition value is not just the code. There's also the brand, the userbase, the engineers, and not having to actually do it themselves.
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
pmlnr 11y ago
It would be about time for Skype to get a serious competition and force M$ to fix it, especially for non-Windows platform.
kasperset 11y ago
Did they forgot Yammer?
- cpeterso 11y ago
  Yammer does seem like a better fit, branding and technology wise, for a Slack-like service than Skype. Microsoft has overextended the Skype brand. The new Skype services are so notoriously crappy that they are a liability to the name. Let the Skype brand focus exclusively on real-time video/multimedia communication. Let the Yammer brand focus on asynchronous, web-based communication for enterprises.
jefflinwood 11y ago
Here's a list of Microsoft's announced acquisitions: https://www.microsoft.com/investor/Stock/AcquisitonHistory/All/default.aspx https://www.microsoft.com/investor/Stock/AcquisitonHistory/A... (warning, asked for an MS Login first) From their results from previous acquisitions, I don't understand what they think they would get by purchasing Slack (unless it is a purely defensive move against Slack developing an in-house document collaboration service, Office 365/Google Docs style).
- gffrd 11y ago
  > against Slack developing an in-house document collaboration service, Office 365/Google Docs style One can only dream …
  - jefflinwood 11y ago
    Bringing document collaboration side-by-side with team communication could have a positive effect on productivity, and Slack could roll it into the per user pricing they already have.
horsecaptin 11y ago
I've always thought of Skype as a personal product that was also used for business, and Slack as a primarily business oriented product. I'm afraid if Skype gets more features rammed into it for groupware, then it'll be even more bloated.
- gffrd 11y ago
  You, me, and everyone else. That's Microsoft's issue with Skype: they fail to realize that the marketplace determines what a product is.* If you took a well-known, purpose-built apartment building and converted it in to offices, you know what people would say? "Why would I set up my office in an apartment building?" Regardless of how good they could make Skype, it's always going to be Skype: the cool thing you use to talk to your brother who's living in Costa Rica for the year. — *That being said, if you've done your due diligence and really understand your audience, you can do a better job at creating a product that directs the attention of the user toward the thing you'd prefer.
nickik 11y ago
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
pcmaffey 11y ago
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.
- harryh 11y ago
  My gut says that Stewart doesn't take an 8B offer. But that, of course, raises the question of what number he does take. It's very hard to know.
  - shostack 11y ago
    It also raises the question of how much ownership he retains of the company and how much of this would actually be his decision (vs. his investors looking for an exit) given that they've raised a Series E round and have taken ~$340M in funding [1]. [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/slack#/entity https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/slack#/entity
    - harryh 11y ago
      Remember that the Series E round was on a very large valuation. He surely gave up a much greater % in the early days when the company was still working on a game.
  - sospep 11y ago
    remember that Stewart is a Canadian and that 8 Billion US dollars is approximately 2.6 Trillion Canadian loonies, that's just about enough to get him a nice 2 bedroom condo somewhere near downtown Vancouver ;)
- st3v3r 11y ago
  I dunno, $8b can buy quite a bit of innovation for your next company.
ossreality 11y ago
That would be a travesty. Skype and the Skype org is such a huge pile of flaming crap.
Ono-Sendai 11y ago
Does anyone else find it bizarre that what is effectively a web-based IRC is (possibly) worth $8B?
- apocalyptic0n3 11y ago
  It's far more than web-based IRC and has a substantial userbase, a significant number of whom are paying for the service. Given the failures MS has had with communication tools in the past, I'm not surprised at all they mulled an $8B acquisition of Slack
  - vpkaihla 11y ago
    > It's far more than web-based IRC How exactly?
    - ChrisLTD 11y ago
      Inline animated gif support.
    - avtar 11y ago
      Mobile clients, persistent chat history when switching clients/devices, search, @mentions notify you when you're away from your desk, and easy integrations with lots of services. P.S. I mainly use IRC everyday :)
      - pmlnr 11y ago
        Which is IRC + ZNC + Andchat + bots...
        gisenberg 11y ago
        This echoes the "couldn't you just replicate Dropbox with x + y + z ..." mindset of the past.
        11y ago
pfarnsworth 11y ago
What a disaster that would have been. The people that use Slack are much younger than the enterprise customers that Microsoft has. It would have been another failed acquisition. Plus we used Slack and moved aggressively back to HipChat. I thought it was fine but there's no real difference between Slack and Hipchat.
- mratzloff 11y ago
  There's one big difference. You can host HipChat behind your firewall.
- rb808 11y ago
  Xbox & minecraft users are often much youger that Slack users and that acquisition worked well.
- RHSeeger 11y ago
  You can't edit messages older than 1 minute in HipChat, and even editing newer messages is painful. That fact, alone, makes me despise it.
gdulli 11y ago
Small anecdote about Skype specifically as an instant messenger. When eBay acquired Skype there was little willing adoption of it for IMs at eBay corporate. AIM (through whatever client) was the de facto standard. Management didn't like this but also didn't have the courage to say, "Skype is what you're using now." So there was an embarrassingly transparent mandate from "IT" that AIM was disallowed due to a vague (but critical) "security" concern. That somehow persisted across versions and years. This was sort of my experience of working at eBay and my impression of its management in a nutshell. Skype may be good for voice/video, I don't know. It's a terrible instant messenger. The only one I ever used where I had to worry about it swallowing messages and couldn't just assume the recipient got them.
StreamBright 11y ago
They should just ditch all of their efforts to try to make Skype or Lync working and either start it over or acquire a company that can do voice/video calls and text chat reliably like WeChat for example. Skype is such a tragic product that I can hardly believe that anybody would using it in a corporate environment if it wasn't MS who were pushing for it. One interesting question that comes up in my mind: is group voice calling a really hard problem to solve? At this stage I am much more likely to use a simple phone conference than Skype because it works just so much better. Curious what others think.
aabajian 11y ago
Came for comments about Lync, was not disappointed.
cdnsteve 11y ago
We initially used Skype on our team to communicate with others. However, the software was horribly buggy on OSX. Slack has become part of our main toolchain. It works, has the basic features you need and doesn't get in our way. The integrations are great and we'll continue to use them. Unless Microsoft rebuilds Skype for the ground up, I don't see us leaving Slack for it. They had their chance, and they dropped the ball.
- cheez 11y ago
  Microsoft had their chance and dropped the ball on a lot of things, but they always figure it out. Skype on OSX looks much better now and I suspect if they're focusing on Skype instead of spending $8B, then you're looking at serious competition.
  - atmosx 11y ago
    I have a different experience. It was bad before MS came in and got way worst after - except the icon. The icon now is way more slick! But that won't cut it... Plus, I would never use it professionally since Skype (and MS in general) are the extreme low in regards to privacy.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - junto 11y ago
      The one thing that really bugs me about Skype recently is that it refuses to remember my login. Every time I want to login to the Windows app after a restart or update it doesn't log me in automatically. There isn't even a "remember me" option on the login page, which I swear used to be there. Since my password is a 1Password generated secure password, I have to go look it up every time.
    - phren0logy 11y ago
      Now that Skype is under the Office license (and hence must be secure enough to meet HIPAA/HITEC) hopefully the security issues improve dramatically.
Ensorceled 11y ago
Please focus on Skype, it's a mess. Now that we are no longer using HipChat, the buggiest application I use on a regular basis is Skype.
- bliti 11y ago
  Would mind commenting on why you do not use HipChat anymore? Curious...
  - modoc 11y ago
    I still really like HipChat but the latest versions have been unbelievably bad. Connection issues, message delivery issues, users showing up as offline who are actually online, etc... If they don't fix things soon we're going to have switch to Slack.
    - bliti 11y ago
      I've been having the same issues. It's almost unusable. A pity because we've been using it for years.
  - Ensorceled 11y ago
    I kept getting logged out a couple of times a day, HipChat support recommended reverting to 3.X and "ignoring the upgrade popups". That didn't really help. It times out over night so the first thing you have to do in the morning is remember to "refresh" your HipChat connection. It doesn't flag conversations as having new content while you are away so catching up means visiting every room. It flushed my configuration a few times, so I had to reopen all the rooms I'm in and reconfigure all my settings. Basically it became I tool I maintained instead of a tool that made my life easier.
ThomPete 11y ago
Before I started to use Slack more frequently I was in a Skype chat group with some ex colleagues of mine. We simply started a group chat and just kept it consistent. It was actually a pretty easy and great way to share links and discuss things. We even toyed with some ideas around a link grabber for alle the stuff we shared there. We only moved to Slack because of better support for link sharing and some other things. If Microsoft can't figure out how to turn Skype into a Slack competitor they are more than welcome to contact me. I have plenty of ideas on how to to do that :)
myth_buster 11y ago
Yikes... Being acquired by big CO is the equivalent of "we sent buster to your granny upstate"...
vitaut 11y ago
Skype reliability has deteriorated considerably over the years. We have switched over to Google Hangouts which is more reliable and has better video quality.
- randomsearch 11y ago
  Can second this. Switched recently after bandwidth issues made Skype unusable.
brianbreslin 11y ago
Doesnt microsoft alredy own yammer? Wouldnt thatbe a better fit to compete with slack?
sandworm101 11y ago
Skype has dropped linux. SKype is now dead to me and those I work with. Dustbin of history.
BlackjackCF 11y ago
Slack would have been a great investment for Microsoft. Still, I look at Skype and realize that Slack would have probably declined in quality after an acquisition. Kind of glad it didn't pan out.
intrasight 11y ago
All my enterprise clients are MSFT shops. They will make due with whatever collaboration tools that MSFT provides. Also, they would never use a product from a company named "Slack".
- jjawssd 11y ago
  Why wouldn't they?
  - intrasight 11y ago
    doesn't sound "enterprisey"
- hahamrfunnyguy 11y ago
  Exactly. To some extent, all Microsoft has to do is make their product offering good enough to prevent folks from leaving for products like Slack or Hipchat. Skype for business allows you to send ims, files, share your screen and clumsily do group chats. It does most everything people need to do well enough and it comes pre-installed with Office.
mmaunder 11y ago
Really glad MS didn't buy Slack. I think they're going to be an amazing big business that will generate a lot of cash and opportunity. Most acquisitions by big businesses, either early or late stage, destroy value. Big biz thinks they can innovate by buying. Smaller biz wants an exit. The innovation exits on acquisition and after earn-out. Both suffer and we all lose what could have been the next Google.
- k__ 11y ago
  I think it depends on the level where the business acts on. If you have a real low level technology, an acquisition can be a good thing, because the big corp could integrate it some of their products and increase the spreading. But yeah, if we look at Skype and WhatsApp, it's probably good that Slack didn't get acquired.
  - rokhayakebe 11y ago
    Weren't both of these somewhat successful acquisitions? i.e. Would Skype have been better today without the acquisions, and did WhatsApp suffer product-wise as a result of being part of FB?
    - wodenokoto 11y ago
      I think Skype suffered from their first acquisition and Microsoft never got it back on to its original trajectory when they bought it. Skype still has a lot of consumer good will and a strong brand. Amongst my peers online video calling is called Skype notater what platform we use.
- whatever_dude 11y ago
  Same. Being sold to a big company would (probably) be death to Slack as a product. I like it the way it is now - lean, small, simple. Integration is possible but only if you install specific extensions. Let it be its own niche, nothing wrong with it. Not every app needs to conquer the world. And as much as I like the "new" Microsoft, I certainly would hate to see Outlook, Office, and other corporatey scrap spilling into Slack.
usaphp 11y ago
I keep hearing over and over about how horrible Skype is. I've been using it for over 5 years (on OS X) now and I have not noticed any issues, and the improvements to UI over the years made it really nice and user friendly. So I don't really know if people who complain about it actually used it in the recent years or not.
- gregmac 11y ago
  I've been recently (eg, had a meeting yesterday) interacting with a company that uses Skype for meetings, and I think by far, it's the worst meeting software I've used (vs Webex, joinme, Gotomeeting, etc). It takes several minutes to get things connected and working -- especially the first time, when you have to install something (not sure if it's the full skype client?) to even view the meeting. Screen sharing has some really stupid flaws, like not being able to go full screen on the client-side. Phone integration usually works, once you find the right number in a list of several dozen phone numbers (not sure if this is Skype or the business using it), though it shows you in the meeting as a separate "unknown" user (even if you've also joined via PC).
  - usaphp 11y ago
    I think the problem is that they are using a wrong tool for the job, because of that you are comparing Skype to a meeting software, but Skype is not focused on being a meeting software, it is focused on friends and family video calls by proving a simple interface and basic functions.
    - gregmac 11y ago
      http://www.skype.com/en/business/ http://www.skype.com/en/business/
      - douche 11y ago
        That's the confusion. That page is selling two completely different products, which some brainiac in Marketing decided to lump under the same banner.
chrisgd 11y ago
No one in here mentions Jabber. . .
lifeisstillgood 11y ago
What amazes me is just how bad the politics in MS must be to not swat Slack aside like a fly. Slack is basically an IRC server with bots. Office communicator / Msn messenger/ whatever it is now / is installed on every Windows / office machine and ties into the moat used apps in the world. MS-Slack ought to have "Mary just updated the Walmart contract" messages flinging around every marketing department in the world. The fact it does not is testament to how far Giants can fall (in the 80s and 90s Microsoft would have already danced on Slacks grave). Larry And Sergey need to study Microsoft a lot more carefully than "it was Ballmers fault" to try and avoid the same fate.
tanv_nadkarni 11y ago
Microsoft should have been the most natural choice of in-team communication. While their sales team was busy selling crappy software to large companies and ignoring small ones someone built a kick-ass product called Slack. It does not make sense for Microsoft to buy slack. Microsoft already has the sales muscle to reach millions. What Microsoft does not have is a product that can compete with Slack. They should build it ASAP as part of their Office suite. Skype is not that solution.
Sealy 11y ago
This situation strangely reminds me of MSN Messenger for anyone old enough to remember that. It ended in failure. Most blamed Microsoft's management for it.
andrewguy9 11y ago
And all the slack users breathed a sigh of relief. Their most beloved tool wasn't destroyed by an accident prone behemoth.
sergiotapia 11y ago
I wonder why Discord isn't more popular, it's basically Slack with voice chat baked in that works really well. All of your favorite Slack shortcuts work exactly the same. Even pressing the Up arrow key to edit your last message. I guess the 'gamer' branding hurts it's potential use in the workplace.
- vehementi 11y ago
  Yeah it's heavily gamer focused. Not that it coulnd't be used for business. Slack is a lot more featureful though and you can do cool integrations. Discord has no search ability. Discord is also conspicuously free and I think everyone's waiting to see if they implode or not. I love Discord.
  - jhgg 11y ago
    >Discord has no search ability. Yet. It's in our pipeline.
vonklaus 11y ago
slack needs to sell asap. edit: to expand. Slack has 0 technology moat. The reason Github has been so successful and has gone many years without significant competition, is that it is an open platform in the sense that I have my personal, work, and private repos there. Many open source stuff is up there, and the platform allows me to contribute to my private repos, public repos and quickly download software. To some extent slack has this idea where you can have 3 or 4 organizations in the app, but user to user seems to not be implemented, or at least non-obvious. Everything is siloed in an org. lots of companies and apps are working on chat and are substitutes for pieces. It was not obvioius Github could make money or was significant for a long time. Professional chat is the opposite. * Low barrier to entry * high competition * limited revenue/margin * open source alternatives * largely based on users/social proof. e.g. could get myspaced. * competing in a space that is "hot" and many larger companies are moving in, already poised to take this.
- Eridrus 11y ago
  I'm not really bullish on Slack as a product, but I don't think Slack as a business is so bad. I think Slack is trying to be the Yammer of IRC: you get it in through a couple of people using it, and all of a sudden you convert the entire enterprise, hence the focus on marketing. Hipchat/Flowdock/probably others existed before Slack, and are still largely interchangeable at this point, but they're not investing so heavily in marketing. I think a direct comparison to MySpace is inaccurate since neither they nor their competitors are directly viral (yet?), but they could certainly be replaced. The question is: who would want to spend a pile of money trying to outmarket Slack? It's hard to tell what their sales figures are, but if they get lodged in the public's view as the company that does this, it will take concerted, capital-intensive effort to dislodge them, and why would you go to that effort for a low margin space? Open Source is really not relevant in this space since the price is cheap and you're paying for convenience.
xufi 11y ago
I wonder how SKype will go in to Business use. Perhaps it'll be like Google Hangouts
derFunk 11y ago
First Microsoft destroyed Skype, now they want to destroy Slack? Hopefully not gonna happen. We're in the process of moving away from Skype, which we used for 10 years in the company, to Slack. Partners went away from Skype to Flowdock and Hipchat. Instead of buying Slack, Microsoft should invest to make Skype great again. Yet I'm not sure if this is still possible after they broke all features Skype excelled at. Or use the money to found a new competitor. But please don't buy Slack. This can only fail.
perseusprime11 11y ago
This is just sad. Slack and Github fit into their strategy perfectly as they both tie into productivity. This must be another one of those bad moves from Bill Gates.
0x0 11y ago
The day MS buys Slack and assimilates it into "Skype for X" is the day I cancel our business subscription and rotate our credit cards.
a-dub 11y ago
"Skype for Business" has some of the worst UX I have ever seen.
giancarlostoro 11y ago
Slack might of made a great addition to Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code... I really don't want to see it happen though, they need to fix up some odd security problems with Skype and the sluggishness of Skype is really bad, used to be somewhat bad, but lately it's gotten worse.
jaysoncena 11y ago
It would be really cool if they can make Skype easier for app integration similar to Slack. Also, if they can update their Linux client. Anyone tried running Skype for windows on wine?
ljw1001 11y ago
If slack is worth $8 billion.... Sorry, There's no way to complete that sentence. How about, Slack is worth about as much as Basecamp.
perseusprime11 11y ago
Not to worry. They will buy it when it becomes $20B. Old companies move slow.
- SinomaSo 11y ago
  Cisco might be more interested to buy Slack if their Lync competitor called "Cisco Spark" fails.
taf2 11y ago
When the number is over 1 billion the answer is always yes... Mmmk
dpacmittal 11y ago
How about they start by focusing on better linux and OSX compatibility. Skype is horribly broken right now. Linux client hasn't been updated in 3 years: http://community.skype.com/t5/Linux/Why-is-Skype-on-Linux-still-so-grossly-out-of-date/m-p/4314193 http://community.skype.com/t5/Linux/Why-is-Skype-on-Linux-st... http://thevarguy.com/open-source-application-software-companies/skype-linux-breaks-people-blame-microsoft-are-we-surprise http://thevarguy.com/open-source-application-software-compan... Also, I added $10 skype credit a while back when I needed to make few international phone calls. I used about $3 of it. The rest $7 was in my account for a while and then it disappeared. What's the reasoning behind that? It's totally unacceptable to have credits disappear like that. In that same period I added $10 to Viber as well and I still have $8 remaining on it even after 1.5 years.
boredatnight12 11y ago
Classic Microsoft.
hacknat 11y ago
Slack works on Linux, which is a big deal for some teams. Before people jump on me, stating, "Linux market share for dev machines is too small to matter." Consider that there are some members of organizations who need to use it. Is an org going to leave those users out in the dark? Slack working on Linux is quite convenient for my team, which has some Linux and OSX users. Lync and Skype on Linux just don't work (at least, I couldn't get them working).
dbg31415 11y ago
Woah woah woah. Comparing Slack to Skype... it's not just apples to oranges... it's comparing Iron Man's Jarvis to a rotary telephone. Slack is how we bring together all of our project data -- from all of our tools -- in one place, and how we automate tasks like daily Scrum and contract creation. Slack asks us, "Hey what are you working on today? What are your blockers?" and builds an automated list. We can ask Slack to do work for us, like, "Slack, create an MSA from our template and send it Joe at Clientcorp." A million other uses. Slack is great and saving SO much time. Skype sits unused and spams me every month asking me to put in more quarters for some bizarre concept of "long-distance" phone calls. And honestly the UX is so horrible, it's going to take a total re-launch to make it something I'd even consider installing again.
herbst 11y ago
Skype is old and broken on Linux, and the worst battery nightmare on Android. I could not even use it if i wanted to. Slack on the other side just works everywhere i could ever need it, including a lot of automation tasks. How could skype even get popular with the crappy API they offer?

329 points by crsmith 11y ago

bigpoppa 11y ago

a bargain if you ask me

sirmike_ 11y ago

Please no, stay away. I thought those kinda days at MSFT were over ...

untog 11y ago

Sad thing is that Slack would be a far better fit for Microsoft, given that it's primarily business-focused. I've used Skype for work but only because it's the only option we've had, not because anyone actually wants to use it. Hangouts and Slack are so much more business-friendly. That said, I think MS made the right call given that they already own Skype. It could be good - great, even - if they actually tried. They don't need a Slack acquisition for that, but they probably could do with rebuilding every native app they have from the ground up, every single one is awful.

moheeb 11y ago
I don't understand why Skype is so crappy. Most Microsoft software is at the very least average, with several products being industry standards. Why is Skype so different?
- abawany 11y ago
  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 cool as well. I was surprised to find how focused Microsoft has quietly become on messaging products.
  - Coding_Cat 11y ago
    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 again, multi-platform support is a joke, having to delete %appdata% every other update in order to be able to log in, intrusive ads, a lack of audio device at startup seems to freeze up any windows audio afterwards until Skype is killed (This could be Windows itself ofc, but it's both Microsoft)... As an aside, this is regular old Skype, I've heard it being said that "Skype for Business" is a completely different program.
    - dceddia 11y ago
      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 ;)
    - abawany 11y ago
      I remember performing the periodic AppData cleanup in 2009/2010 but haven't had to do that in the last few years. It was during that time that the chat delay issues were very common as well. From my point of view, while the Microsoft takeover and remake initially brought difficulties with login, the recent versions were not too bad apart from the Windows 8 Store version mess. But that is just my experience. While I personally don't use the chat functionality that often anymore, the few times I have used it (say when an interview was being done over Skype), it worked ok but I realize that is hardly a high-use model. I agree that other messaging solutions such as Hangouts, HipChat, Slack, GroupMe, and etc. appear to perform much more seamlessly without needing to be aware of idiosyncrasies.
      - Coding_Cat 11y ago
        For me their still the occasional problem. Perhaps it is related to Windows 7?
- untog 11y ago
  I've always assumed that the acquisition failed horribly. The apps are still the same code as pre-acquisition, and I'll bet a lot of the original developers left pretty sharpish. It's quite possible that the original codebase is an absolute train wreck, it's not as if it was ever an amazing app, after all. I wonder if MS acquired Skype today (i.e. "The New Microsoft") whether they'd have been more successful.
  - Splines 11y ago
    Skype has a ton of legacy (just look at this list: http://www.skype.com/en/download-skype/skype-for-computer/ http://www.skype.com/en/download-skype/skype-for-computer/) - supporting that can't be easy. WhatsApp will probably face similar problems in 5-10 years, if they want to maintain compatibility with the myriad of clients they have in the wild.
    - aylons 11y ago
      > WhatsApp will probably face similar problems in 5-10 years, if they want to maintain compatibility with the myriad of clients they have in the wild. They don't. They just announced dropping support for Blackberry and S60.
- j_koreth 11y ago
  Oddly enough Skype got bad under Microsoft's ownership too
  - ansjun 11y ago
    Microsoft has a proven track record on buying and ruining perfectly fine startups/products. Skype, Yammer etc.
- mindo 11y ago
  Because they bought it and as with everything they buy, they milk it until its dead.
- CaptSpify 11y ago
  Agreed that it's weird. IME, Microsoft is always best when they have healthy competition. They only get crappy when they are the monopoly, so why is it different for skype?
- minionslave 11y ago
  Every software project is maintained by different teams, sometimes different departments. For example the Office team is managed differently from the Bing team. Just like the Visual Studio team will have a different management from the Skype one. It is possible that the skype team has a different standard, different priorities imposed by the managers.
- WorldMaker 11y ago
  On the consumer (not "for Business") side of things, I think some of it is the long running experiment to make Skype a platform and merge said platform deeper into the broader ecosystem of apps. With Windows 10 I think we're finally starting to see some of that shake out and some of that improve. It's very interesting seeing the seamless merger of Skype into the Messaging, People, and Phone apps in Windows 10. Having finally figured out the new Windows 10 Skype Video app I realized that I could uninstall the classic desktop app and the Windows 8 version of Skype mobile that is (weirdly) still in the Windows Store on mobile as if it is still a useful app (and in which case it is not), unlike its short-lived tablet/desktop counterpart. You can still see some of the uneven edges: the reason I had to figure out the Skype Video app was that it is the only one that currently supports accepting or making Skype contact requests, before you can link them in People. (I presume that sort of functionality should eventually merge in the People app more directly?) Also, there's still that slight friction between traditional Skype accounts and using Microsoft accounts for Skype that I'm unsure if there will ever be a clean fix. I think that the "Skype Video" should be named something like Videophone to better align with brand-less Messaging, Phone app names, but that's a marketing quibble. I do like the way that SMS messaging and Skype messaging interleave in the Messaging app now. It's nice having only one app for that. I wish it supported merging in Facebook's Messenger as well, but I realize that won't happen for many, many reasons. As for Skype for Business, I think it's been solid since its Lync-branded days. I'm curious if they can get the sort of "platform leverage" we are seeing on the consumer side of things, but it doesn't necessarily need it. If they make it more Slack-like, that could be interesting.
bad_user 11y ago
I really hate Skype, but unfortunately Skype has no alternative for group audio / video calls, with the occasional screen sharing. Hangouts seemed promising, but it's worse. But I can tell you that at our company we are giving up on Slack, but not on Skype. > rebuilding every native app they have from the ground up, every single one is awful On Mac OS X, which is what I use, it's acceptable. I found it to be fairly acceptable on iOS as well, though you can't rely on receiving group chat messages in time (in all honesty, I think that's a feature :)). I don't use Windows, I imagine it's fine there. On Linux it's super awful. I have hope for the new web interface to replace my needs for a Linux client, but the web interface is awful as well. On Android last year it leaked my battery like crazy. Nowadays it's maybe better in battery usage, but I had problems with my microphone - if I mute and then un-mute, then it can happen for the mic to not recover and I have to reinitiate the call. It's super annoying. My personal feeling is that Microsoft does not invest enough resources in these clients. On the primary platforms they always seem to be one or two bugs away from being OK. On Linux it's like the same client from 5 years ago and it still works, but it never got any love from Microsoft. So I think they simply didn't give a crap, hoping to lure people into Lync or something. Which is too bad, because Skype always had great potential, it still has.
- recursive 11y ago
  Hangouts works far better for me than Skype. It just works. With skype, I struggle to even create video conversation. I remember one fateful day when I tried 4 different devices with skype installed, and had a complete failure to get any of them to work.
  - bad_user 11y ago
    It depends on your location I guess. I'm from Romania and travel and speak with people mostly in Europe. I've had the same failure you mention with Hangouts. And video quality was never OK whenever I tried, with frames being dropped and so on. Whereas Skype has been OK even on my mobile 3G/4G connection and I'm a heavy user. In fairness, Skype had a couple of major network outages. Maybe you hit one of those.
  - 11y ago

a2tech 11y ago

And Skype will continue to be terrible. Just installed Office 2013 with its included 'Skype for Business' and boy does it look terrible. Its got a distinct MSN Messenger from the early 2000's vibe going on. Lots of buttons, very bright color choices (lots of white and bright blue).

nickpeterson 11y ago
To be fair, that is rebadged Lync, not really skype. And yes, lync is terrible.
pmlnr 11y ago
If I could get the old skype back, with that 2000s vibe, I wouldn't have any issues with it.

SeanDav 11y ago

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

reitanqild 11y ago
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.
- Phlarp 11y ago
  "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.
  - Zekio 11y ago
    Isn't skype still P2P?? otherwise why would it have an option to disallow P2P between you and people you don't know?
    - pmlnr 11y ago
      http://www.zdnet.com/article/skype-ditched-peer-to-peer-supernodes-for-scalability-not-surveillance/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/skype-ditched-peer-to-peer-supe...
- criddell 11y ago
  I don't know if I would characterize what they were doing as snooping. Is Google snooping when GMail does a keyword scan of your email? IIRC, Microsoft was loading the URL to look for malware.

chollida1 11y ago

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-offshore-avoid-paying-29-billion-us-taxes-1665938 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 generation comes along with a new favorite tool. I'd be interested in hearing from someone who would argue that slack will be a dominate communication tool in 5-8 years time and still exist in a meaningful way in 10 years time.

chishaku 11y ago
> ICQ, Microsoft instant messenger ... slack like tools... I think people too often overlook Slack's integrations. Yes, Slack is "just" chat or "just" a glorified IRC. Or is it? I don't know how long it would take me to integrate my Stripe, Github, Trello, and Zendesk streams into IRC to the point where I could set it and forget it. I think for business users at least, using this type of setup _effectively_ could make it hard to move away.
- baddox 11y ago
  Slack seems to have mostly eclipsed Hipchat, at least among Silicon Valley startups, but integrations probably weren't a huge factor in that. Slack does have a nicer flow for integrations, but Hipchat worked quite well (and actually had much-missed features like customizing the background color of messages; it's unfathomable how Slack could still not have this feature).
  - Klathmon 11y ago
    >it's unfathomable how Slack could still not have this feature I hear this saying a lot, and every time I just can't take it seriously. This is the first time I've ever heard of someone wanting customizable background colors for messages on a messaging platform. It's just not something I or anyone I know about cares about. I just can't see how that would be considered a high importance feature by anyone.

sand500 11y ago

Switched from Skype to Discord for gaming. No regrets.

Redoubts 11y ago
I'm pretty impressed with it too. Nice UI and good functionality.
Syrup-tan 11y ago
The unofficial API community is also really great, and there are a plethora of libraries to choose from to get something working quickly. https://blog.discordapp.com/the-robot-revolution-has-unofficially-begun/ https://blog.discordapp.com/the-robot-revolution-has-unoffic...
GFischer 11y ago
Lots of support for Discord here on HN. I saw some posts mentioning that a relatively large project had switched to it for support (Reactiflux http://www.reactiflux.com/ http://www.reactiflux.com/ ). Edit:googled the project

mtgx 11y ago

Has it even recovered $1 billion in profit from the $8.5 billion it paid for Skype itself 5 years ago? And Skype's best days may be behind it. I wonder if they'll do another big write-off in 3 years like they did for aQuantive and Nokia.

reitanqild 11y ago

> 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".

justinv 11y ago
Agree. Especially when you actually open "Skype for Business" it says "Microsoft Lync" at the top. It's a mess.
- douche 11y ago
  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.
  - GFischer 11y ago
    They have regularly bought out companies in that space (last one was Ray Ozzie's Talko, in December, and they specifically said "Talko was acquired to help fuel future innovation in Skype and Skype for Business. As part of the Skype team, we’ll leverage Talko’s technology and the many things we’ve learned during its design and development."). Let's hope they actually benefit from those. http://betanews.com/2015/12/21/microsoft-cops-talko-for-skype-stuff/ http://betanews.com/2015/12/21/microsoft-cops-talko-for-skyp...
    - GFischer 11y ago
      I think the meaning got lost here :( . I was genuinely hoping for Skype & Microsoft to benefit, it was not sarcastic or anything, and I thought it was relevant information.

nakedrobot2 11y ago

Skype is horrible. I'm sorry but it is such an awful tool. It crashes, it loses my old conversations, group calls never work. It is truly horrible, the codebase is a rotting pile of garbage that will never be fixed. I am glad that Slack will not be eaten by Microsoft. I hope they really do implement voice soon.

charlieflowers 11y ago
> I hope they really do implement voice soon. They have! It's in beta, but we've been using it at my workplace for 2 days now. Audio only so far. Better audio quality than anything else we use (appear.in, lync, hangouts, among others). Integrated into slack, so you click a button in a channel to start a call anyone in the channel can join. Nice.
ant6n 11y ago
And the constant forced password resets -- and then you can't reuse passwords, so there are even more password resets. Of course you sign in after a password reset, you're greeted with another password reset. Most recently, Skype told me I've lost control of my gmail account an invited me to create a hotmail account to link with my Skype account instead. Wtf?

sosuke 11y ago

Why not build one? Why keep trying to lift Skype to this purpose? It seems if they really wanted to they could make a good product.

cissou 11y ago
it could cost more than 8bn to build one, and would take time too. Slack is right there, already built.
- AngrySkillzz 11y ago
  If it costs you more than $8bil to write a chat app then you're doing something wrong.
  - trott 11y ago
    I'd like to know what people think developing something like Slack should cost, and why MS thought $8e9 was a potentially reasonable valuation.
    - st3v3r 11y ago
      Keep in mind that the acquisition value is not just the code. There's also the brand, the userbase, the engineers, and not having to actually do it themselves.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]

pmlnr 11y ago

It would be about time for Skype to get a serious competition and force M$ to fix it, especially for non-Windows platform.

kasperset 11y ago

Did they forgot Yammer?

cpeterso 11y ago
Yammer does seem like a better fit, branding and technology wise, for a Slack-like service than Skype. Microsoft has overextended the Skype brand. The new Skype services are so notoriously crappy that they are a liability to the name. Let the Skype brand focus exclusively on real-time video/multimedia communication. Let the Yammer brand focus on asynchronous, web-based communication for enterprises.

jefflinwood 11y ago

Here's a list of Microsoft's announced acquisitions: https://www.microsoft.com/investor/Stock/AcquisitonHistory/All/default.aspx https://www.microsoft.com/investor/Stock/AcquisitonHistory/A... (warning, asked for an MS Login first) From their results from previous acquisitions, I don't understand what they think they would get by purchasing Slack (unless it is a purely defensive move against Slack developing an in-house document collaboration service, Office 365/Google Docs style).

gffrd 11y ago
> against Slack developing an in-house document collaboration service, Office 365/Google Docs style One can only dream …
- jefflinwood 11y ago
  Bringing document collaboration side-by-side with team communication could have a positive effect on productivity, and Slack could roll it into the per user pricing they already have.

horsecaptin 11y ago

I've always thought of Skype as a personal product that was also used for business, and Slack as a primarily business oriented product. I'm afraid if Skype gets more features rammed into it for groupware, then it'll be even more bloated.

gffrd 11y ago
You, me, and everyone else. That's Microsoft's issue with Skype: they fail to realize that the marketplace determines what a product is.* If you took a well-known, purpose-built apartment building and converted it in to offices, you know what people would say? "Why would I set up my office in an apartment building?" Regardless of how good they could make Skype, it's always going to be Skype: the cool thing you use to talk to your brother who's living in Costa Rica for the year. — *That being said, if you've done your due diligence and really understand your audience, you can do a better job at creating a product that directs the attention of the user toward the thing you'd prefer.

nickik 11y ago

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

pcmaffey 11y ago

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.

harryh 11y ago
My gut says that Stewart doesn't take an 8B offer. But that, of course, raises the question of what number he does take. It's very hard to know.
- shostack 11y ago
  It also raises the question of how much ownership he retains of the company and how much of this would actually be his decision (vs. his investors looking for an exit) given that they've raised a Series E round and have taken ~$340M in funding [1]. [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/slack#/entity https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/slack#/entity
  - harryh 11y ago
    Remember that the Series E round was on a very large valuation. He surely gave up a much greater % in the early days when the company was still working on a game.
- sospep 11y ago
  remember that Stewart is a Canadian and that 8 Billion US dollars is approximately 2.6 Trillion Canadian loonies, that's just about enough to get him a nice 2 bedroom condo somewhere near downtown Vancouver ;)
st3v3r 11y ago
I dunno, $8b can buy quite a bit of innovation for your next company.

ossreality 11y ago

That would be a travesty. Skype and the Skype org is such a huge pile of flaming crap.

Ono-Sendai 11y ago

Does anyone else find it bizarre that what is effectively a web-based IRC is (possibly) worth $8B?

apocalyptic0n3 11y ago
It's far more than web-based IRC and has a substantial userbase, a significant number of whom are paying for the service. Given the failures MS has had with communication tools in the past, I'm not surprised at all they mulled an $8B acquisition of Slack
- vpkaihla 11y ago
  > It's far more than web-based IRC How exactly?
  - ChrisLTD 11y ago
    Inline animated gif support.
  - avtar 11y ago
    Mobile clients, persistent chat history when switching clients/devices, search, @mentions notify you when you're away from your desk, and easy integrations with lots of services. P.S. I mainly use IRC everyday :)
    - pmlnr 11y ago
      Which is IRC + ZNC + Andchat + bots...
      - gisenberg 11y ago
        This echoes the "couldn't you just replicate Dropbox with x + y + z ..." mindset of the past.
        11y ago

pfarnsworth 11y ago

What a disaster that would have been. The people that use Slack are much younger than the enterprise customers that Microsoft has. It would have been another failed acquisition. Plus we used Slack and moved aggressively back to HipChat. I thought it was fine but there's no real difference between Slack and Hipchat.

mratzloff 11y ago
There's one big difference. You can host HipChat behind your firewall.
rb808 11y ago
Xbox & minecraft users are often much youger that Slack users and that acquisition worked well.
RHSeeger 11y ago
You can't edit messages older than 1 minute in HipChat, and even editing newer messages is painful. That fact, alone, makes me despise it.

gdulli 11y ago

Small anecdote about Skype specifically as an instant messenger. When eBay acquired Skype there was little willing adoption of it for IMs at eBay corporate. AIM (through whatever client) was the de facto standard. Management didn't like this but also didn't have the courage to say, "Skype is what you're using now." So there was an embarrassingly transparent mandate from "IT" that AIM was disallowed due to a vague (but critical) "security" concern. That somehow persisted across versions and years. This was sort of my experience of working at eBay and my impression of its management in a nutshell. Skype may be good for voice/video, I don't know. It's a terrible instant messenger. The only one I ever used where I had to worry about it swallowing messages and couldn't just assume the recipient got them.

StreamBright 11y ago

They should just ditch all of their efforts to try to make Skype or Lync working and either start it over or acquire a company that can do voice/video calls and text chat reliably like WeChat for example. Skype is such a tragic product that I can hardly believe that anybody would using it in a corporate environment if it wasn't MS who were pushing for it. One interesting question that comes up in my mind: is group voice calling a really hard problem to solve? At this stage I am much more likely to use a simple phone conference than Skype because it works just so much better. Curious what others think.

aabajian 11y ago

Came for comments about Lync, was not disappointed.

cdnsteve 11y ago

We initially used Skype on our team to communicate with others. However, the software was horribly buggy on OSX. Slack has become part of our main toolchain. It works, has the basic features you need and doesn't get in our way. The integrations are great and we'll continue to use them. Unless Microsoft rebuilds Skype for the ground up, I don't see us leaving Slack for it. They had their chance, and they dropped the ball.

cheez 11y ago
Microsoft had their chance and dropped the ball on a lot of things, but they always figure it out. Skype on OSX looks much better now and I suspect if they're focusing on Skype instead of spending $8B, then you're looking at serious competition.
- atmosx 11y ago
  I have a different experience. It was bad before MS came in and got way worst after - except the icon. The icon now is way more slick! But that won't cut it... Plus, I would never use it professionally since Skype (and MS in general) are the extreme low in regards to privacy.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - junto 11y ago
    The one thing that really bugs me about Skype recently is that it refuses to remember my login. Every time I want to login to the Windows app after a restart or update it doesn't log me in automatically. There isn't even a "remember me" option on the login page, which I swear used to be there. Since my password is a 1Password generated secure password, I have to go look it up every time.
  - phren0logy 11y ago
    Now that Skype is under the Office license (and hence must be secure enough to meet HIPAA/HITEC) hopefully the security issues improve dramatically.

Ensorceled 11y ago

Please focus on Skype, it's a mess. Now that we are no longer using HipChat, the buggiest application I use on a regular basis is Skype.

bliti 11y ago
Would mind commenting on why you do not use HipChat anymore? Curious...
- modoc 11y ago
  I still really like HipChat but the latest versions have been unbelievably bad. Connection issues, message delivery issues, users showing up as offline who are actually online, etc... If they don't fix things soon we're going to have switch to Slack.
  - bliti 11y ago
    I've been having the same issues. It's almost unusable. A pity because we've been using it for years.
- Ensorceled 11y ago
  I kept getting logged out a couple of times a day, HipChat support recommended reverting to 3.X and "ignoring the upgrade popups". That didn't really help. It times out over night so the first thing you have to do in the morning is remember to "refresh" your HipChat connection. It doesn't flag conversations as having new content while you are away so catching up means visiting every room. It flushed my configuration a few times, so I had to reopen all the rooms I'm in and reconfigure all my settings. Basically it became I tool I maintained instead of a tool that made my life easier.

ThomPete 11y ago

Before I started to use Slack more frequently I was in a Skype chat group with some ex colleagues of mine. We simply started a group chat and just kept it consistent. It was actually a pretty easy and great way to share links and discuss things. We even toyed with some ideas around a link grabber for alle the stuff we shared there. We only moved to Slack because of better support for link sharing and some other things. If Microsoft can't figure out how to turn Skype into a Slack competitor they are more than welcome to contact me. I have plenty of ideas on how to to do that :)

myth_buster 11y ago

Yikes... Being acquired by big CO is the equivalent of "we sent buster to your granny upstate"...

vitaut 11y ago

Skype reliability has deteriorated considerably over the years. We have switched over to Google Hangouts which is more reliable and has better video quality.

randomsearch 11y ago
Can second this. Switched recently after bandwidth issues made Skype unusable.

brianbreslin 11y ago

Doesnt microsoft alredy own yammer? Wouldnt thatbe a better fit to compete with slack?

sandworm101 11y ago

Skype has dropped linux. SKype is now dead to me and those I work with. Dustbin of history.

BlackjackCF 11y ago

Slack would have been a great investment for Microsoft. Still, I look at Skype and realize that Slack would have probably declined in quality after an acquisition. Kind of glad it didn't pan out.

intrasight 11y ago

All my enterprise clients are MSFT shops. They will make due with whatever collaboration tools that MSFT provides. Also, they would never use a product from a company named "Slack".

jjawssd 11y ago
Why wouldn't they?
- intrasight 11y ago
  doesn't sound "enterprisey"
hahamrfunnyguy 11y ago
Exactly. To some extent, all Microsoft has to do is make their product offering good enough to prevent folks from leaving for products like Slack or Hipchat. Skype for business allows you to send ims, files, share your screen and clumsily do group chats. It does most everything people need to do well enough and it comes pre-installed with Office.

mmaunder 11y ago

Really glad MS didn't buy Slack. I think they're going to be an amazing big business that will generate a lot of cash and opportunity. Most acquisitions by big businesses, either early or late stage, destroy value. Big biz thinks they can innovate by buying. Smaller biz wants an exit. The innovation exits on acquisition and after earn-out. Both suffer and we all lose what could have been the next Google.

k__ 11y ago
I think it depends on the level where the business acts on. If you have a real low level technology, an acquisition can be a good thing, because the big corp could integrate it some of their products and increase the spreading. But yeah, if we look at Skype and WhatsApp, it's probably good that Slack didn't get acquired.
- rokhayakebe 11y ago
  Weren't both of these somewhat successful acquisitions? i.e. Would Skype have been better today without the acquisions, and did WhatsApp suffer product-wise as a result of being part of FB?
  - wodenokoto 11y ago
    I think Skype suffered from their first acquisition and Microsoft never got it back on to its original trajectory when they bought it. Skype still has a lot of consumer good will and a strong brand. Amongst my peers online video calling is called Skype notater what platform we use.
whatever_dude 11y ago
Same. Being sold to a big company would (probably) be death to Slack as a product. I like it the way it is now - lean, small, simple. Integration is possible but only if you install specific extensions. Let it be its own niche, nothing wrong with it. Not every app needs to conquer the world. And as much as I like the "new" Microsoft, I certainly would hate to see Outlook, Office, and other corporatey scrap spilling into Slack.

usaphp 11y ago

I keep hearing over and over about how horrible Skype is. I've been using it for over 5 years (on OS X) now and I have not noticed any issues, and the improvements to UI over the years made it really nice and user friendly. So I don't really know if people who complain about it actually used it in the recent years or not.

gregmac 11y ago
I've been recently (eg, had a meeting yesterday) interacting with a company that uses Skype for meetings, and I think by far, it's the worst meeting software I've used (vs Webex, joinme, Gotomeeting, etc). It takes several minutes to get things connected and working -- especially the first time, when you have to install something (not sure if it's the full skype client?) to even view the meeting. Screen sharing has some really stupid flaws, like not being able to go full screen on the client-side. Phone integration usually works, once you find the right number in a list of several dozen phone numbers (not sure if this is Skype or the business using it), though it shows you in the meeting as a separate "unknown" user (even if you've also joined via PC).
- usaphp 11y ago
  I think the problem is that they are using a wrong tool for the job, because of that you are comparing Skype to a meeting software, but Skype is not focused on being a meeting software, it is focused on friends and family video calls by proving a simple interface and basic functions.
  - gregmac 11y ago
    http://www.skype.com/en/business/ http://www.skype.com/en/business/
    - douche 11y ago
      That's the confusion. That page is selling two completely different products, which some brainiac in Marketing decided to lump under the same banner.

chrisgd 11y ago

No one in here mentions Jabber. . .

lifeisstillgood 11y ago

What amazes me is just how bad the politics in MS must be to not swat Slack aside like a fly. Slack is basically an IRC server with bots. Office communicator / Msn messenger/ whatever it is now / is installed on every Windows / office machine and ties into the moat used apps in the world. MS-Slack ought to have "Mary just updated the Walmart contract" messages flinging around every marketing department in the world. The fact it does not is testament to how far Giants can fall (in the 80s and 90s Microsoft would have already danced on Slacks grave). Larry And Sergey need to study Microsoft a lot more carefully than "it was Ballmers fault" to try and avoid the same fate.

tanv_nadkarni 11y ago

Microsoft should have been the most natural choice of in-team communication. While their sales team was busy selling crappy software to large companies and ignoring small ones someone built a kick-ass product called Slack. It does not make sense for Microsoft to buy slack. Microsoft already has the sales muscle to reach millions. What Microsoft does not have is a product that can compete with Slack. They should build it ASAP as part of their Office suite. Skype is not that solution.

Sealy 11y ago

This situation strangely reminds me of MSN Messenger for anyone old enough to remember that. It ended in failure. Most blamed Microsoft's management for it.

andrewguy9 11y ago

And all the slack users breathed a sigh of relief. Their most beloved tool wasn't destroyed by an accident prone behemoth.

sergiotapia 11y ago

I wonder why Discord isn't more popular, it's basically Slack with voice chat baked in that works really well. All of your favorite Slack shortcuts work exactly the same. Even pressing the Up arrow key to edit your last message. I guess the 'gamer' branding hurts it's potential use in the workplace.

vehementi 11y ago
Yeah it's heavily gamer focused. Not that it coulnd't be used for business. Slack is a lot more featureful though and you can do cool integrations. Discord has no search ability. Discord is also conspicuously free and I think everyone's waiting to see if they implode or not. I love Discord.
- jhgg 11y ago
  >Discord has no search ability. Yet. It's in our pipeline.

vonklaus 11y ago

slack needs to sell asap. edit: to expand. Slack has 0 technology moat. The reason Github has been so successful and has gone many years without significant competition, is that it is an open platform in the sense that I have my personal, work, and private repos there. Many open source stuff is up there, and the platform allows me to contribute to my private repos, public repos and quickly download software. To some extent slack has this idea where you can have 3 or 4 organizations in the app, but user to user seems to not be implemented, or at least non-obvious. Everything is siloed in an org. lots of companies and apps are working on chat and are substitutes for pieces. It was not obvioius Github could make money or was significant for a long time. Professional chat is the opposite. * Low barrier to entry * high competition * limited revenue/margin * open source alternatives * largely based on users/social proof. e.g. could get myspaced. * competing in a space that is "hot" and many larger companies are moving in, already poised to take this.

Eridrus 11y ago
I'm not really bullish on Slack as a product, but I don't think Slack as a business is so bad. I think Slack is trying to be the Yammer of IRC: you get it in through a couple of people using it, and all of a sudden you convert the entire enterprise, hence the focus on marketing. Hipchat/Flowdock/probably others existed before Slack, and are still largely interchangeable at this point, but they're not investing so heavily in marketing. I think a direct comparison to MySpace is inaccurate since neither they nor their competitors are directly viral (yet?), but they could certainly be replaced. The question is: who would want to spend a pile of money trying to outmarket Slack? It's hard to tell what their sales figures are, but if they get lodged in the public's view as the company that does this, it will take concerted, capital-intensive effort to dislodge them, and why would you go to that effort for a low margin space? Open Source is really not relevant in this space since the price is cheap and you're paying for convenience.

xufi 11y ago

I wonder how SKype will go in to Business use. Perhaps it'll be like Google Hangouts

derFunk 11y ago

First Microsoft destroyed Skype, now they want to destroy Slack? Hopefully not gonna happen. We're in the process of moving away from Skype, which we used for 10 years in the company, to Slack. Partners went away from Skype to Flowdock and Hipchat. Instead of buying Slack, Microsoft should invest to make Skype great again. Yet I'm not sure if this is still possible after they broke all features Skype excelled at. Or use the money to found a new competitor. But please don't buy Slack. This can only fail.

perseusprime11 11y ago

This is just sad. Slack and Github fit into their strategy perfectly as they both tie into productivity. This must be another one of those bad moves from Bill Gates.

0x0 11y ago

The day MS buys Slack and assimilates it into "Skype for X" is the day I cancel our business subscription and rotate our credit cards.

a-dub 11y ago

"Skype for Business" has some of the worst UX I have ever seen.

giancarlostoro 11y ago

Slack might of made a great addition to Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code... I really don't want to see it happen though, they need to fix up some odd security problems with Skype and the sluggishness of Skype is really bad, used to be somewhat bad, but lately it's gotten worse.

jaysoncena 11y ago

It would be really cool if they can make Skype easier for app integration similar to Slack. Also, if they can update their Linux client. Anyone tried running Skype for windows on wine?

ljw1001 11y ago

If slack is worth $8 billion.... Sorry, There's no way to complete that sentence. How about, Slack is worth about as much as Basecamp.

perseusprime11 11y ago

Not to worry. They will buy it when it becomes $20B. Old companies move slow.

SinomaSo 11y ago
Cisco might be more interested to buy Slack if their Lync competitor called "Cisco Spark" fails.

taf2 11y ago

When the number is over 1 billion the answer is always yes... Mmmk

dpacmittal 11y ago

How about they start by focusing on better linux and OSX compatibility. Skype is horribly broken right now. Linux client hasn't been updated in 3 years: http://community.skype.com/t5/Linux/Why-is-Skype-on-Linux-still-so-grossly-out-of-date/m-p/4314193 http://community.skype.com/t5/Linux/Why-is-Skype-on-Linux-st... http://thevarguy.com/open-source-application-software-companies/skype-linux-breaks-people-blame-microsoft-are-we-surprise http://thevarguy.com/open-source-application-software-compan... Also, I added $10 skype credit a while back when I needed to make few international phone calls. I used about $3 of it. The rest $7 was in my account for a while and then it disappeared. What's the reasoning behind that? It's totally unacceptable to have credits disappear like that. In that same period I added $10 to Viber as well and I still have $8 remaining on it even after 1.5 years.

boredatnight12 11y ago

Classic Microsoft.

hacknat 11y ago

Slack works on Linux, which is a big deal for some teams. Before people jump on me, stating, "Linux market share for dev machines is too small to matter." Consider that there are some members of organizations who need to use it. Is an org going to leave those users out in the dark? Slack working on Linux is quite convenient for my team, which has some Linux and OSX users. Lync and Skype on Linux just don't work (at least, I couldn't get them working).

dbg31415 11y ago

Woah woah woah. Comparing Slack to Skype... it's not just apples to oranges... it's comparing Iron Man's Jarvis to a rotary telephone. Slack is how we bring together all of our project data -- from all of our tools -- in one place, and how we automate tasks like daily Scrum and contract creation. Slack asks us, "Hey what are you working on today? What are your blockers?" and builds an automated list. We can ask Slack to do work for us, like, "Slack, create an MSA from our template and send it Joe at Clientcorp." A million other uses. Slack is great and saving SO much time. Skype sits unused and spams me every month asking me to put in more quarters for some bizarre concept of "long-distance" phone calls. And honestly the UX is so horrible, it's going to take a total re-launch to make it something I'd even consider installing again.

herbst 11y ago

Skype is old and broken on Linux, and the worst battery nightmare on Android. I could not even use it if i wanted to. Slack on the other side just works everywhere i could ever need it, including a lot of automation tasks. How could skype even get popular with the crappy API they offer?