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Comment by Ekaros | Hacker News Reader

Why don't Slack find some partner that would them allow bundle a office suite for one price for their offering? Be actually competitive.

Microsoft offers good product for good price. Why not compete fairly and get things together with some other companies to combat them at this same price?

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You mean like Salesforce?

The fact that Slack had to be bought out by a larger company rather than be able to compete on their own against Microsoft despite having a much better product is bad for consumers. That is exactly the point of antitrust action like this one. We should have 25 small players, not just 2 big ones.

Which is better for consumer. To pay less for one competent product or to pay more for multiple better products together?

Looking at streaming, is it not extremely great following that logic that we have dozen different services. All with their own "better" content. Instead of one lesser one with all content?

"Better for the consumer" doesn't automatically mean cheaper. Competition is better than no competition. It should (doesn't always) lead to lower prices in a specific sector but may lead to higher spending overall, like in your example lower cost for better video/chat client but perhaps larger IT spend overall at the corporate level. Still better for the consumer because they have better products.

Zero is probably not optimal but more competition isn’t always better than less.

For example there’s many more bike manufacturers than car manufacturers. But if anything cars have improved substantially more in price:features over the years.

I feel that in the realm of e-bikes. I have to hope that the manufacturer that I bought my with stays in business for the life of my bike and that I didn't just buy a couple thousand dollar paperweight.

> Competition is better than no competition.

But Slack competed. It forced Microsoft to improve, then it lost. "Competition" doesn't mean artificially keep competitors alive when they can't survive on their own. If Slack was that much better then we wouldn't be having this convo because companies would see the value and pay for it.

The actual problem is that companies just aren't seeing that much value in Slack.

> despite having a much better product

Not my experience.

> We should have 25 small players, not just 2 big ones.

What would those 25 small players compete on? Chat and video calling arent terribly difficult to build or maintain, and unless you bundle features into them (like M365 integration), there isn't much to differentiate on, and those integrations aren't terribly hard to build either.

My feeling is that chat and video messaging are expected to be bundled in with every OS and office suite and don't have enough value to be stand alone products anymore, in a similar way that browsers are expected to be free.

At least where we are now, people/businesses can get these features without having to pay more, do more security and compliance attestations before putting their entire company communication into one of 25 small platforms, and all of the major options (teams, slack, zoom) basically work the same, though teams is a resource hog.

I don't think anyone wants to think about their messaging platform, they just want something that works, is secure, and is cheap.

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