Slack's EU competition complaint, Slack v. Microsoft v. Google v. Zoom
Why Slack and Zoom are likely in trouble with MSFT, Google, Amazon releasing all encompassing collaboration products.
Slack recently filed a EU competition complaint against Microsoft. I’ve been thinking about this for the past week and a few things spurred this article:
The house antitrust subcommittee hearing
Google integrating a large Google Meet button in the calendar
Google integrating meet into Gmail apps on iOS and Android
From Slack’s filing:
“We’re confident that we win on the merits of our product, but we can’t ignore illegal behavior that deprives customers of access to the tools and solutions they want,” said Jonathan Prince, Vice President of Communications and Policy at Slack. “Slack threatens Microsoft’s hold on business email, the cornerstone of Office, which means Slack threatens Microsoft’s lock on enterprise software.”
From the Verge article:
Slack’s competition complaint, published yesterday, is targeted solely at Microsoft and focused on the company’s bundling of Teams with its Office 365 subscription. “What we’re asking for is that Teams be separated from the Office suite and be sold separately with a fair commercial price tag associated with it so it competes on the merit with our product,” explained David Schellhase, Slack’s legal chief, in a call with reporters yesterday. “It really is as simple and straightforward as that.”
Digging a little deeper into this you will see that on MSFT’s teams pricing page they have a free tier and of course their “bundled” prices. Their priced bundle of course includes email along with teams.
Side Note : Tried to use Teams as well! And the onboarding is not too bad. I digress!
For comparison I have shown both the paid “bundles” below.
Slack too obviously has a free version but their priced bundle includes Slack and uh well...nothing else.
And here is Team’s free version:
Slack’s complaint is that MSFT Teams bundled version includes Microsoft 365 basic (and here is the Microsoft 365 pricing page which is interesting ). Note that “Office 365” is now called “Microsoft 365”. This happened back in March
Slack of course does not have the Office suite (Word, Powerpoint, Excel) or email as well. They would never have email well because they’re an email killer right? Fact of the matter is the email killer really didn’t kill email. In the long run Slack might injure email but I don’t think it will ever kill email. Slack connect’s aim is to kill email. If Slack connect is indeed successful (lots of companies join and connect and even if you consider. Considering this : there are a billion knowledge workers so that’s a tall order.
Anyway, Slack basically wants all communication to go to a proprietary standard from an open standard (POP/IMAP) so that they can then have a (future) monopoly on workplace communications in the event that their dream of killing email comes true (and of course Stewart Butterfield was happy to embrace the term email killer and is now not?
From an interview with Stewart Butterfield (SB) : Why Slack’s CEO Doesn’t Want to ‘Kill Email’
AP: One thing email is good at, though, is letting you talk to anyone. Does Slack have any ambition to one day let people communicate with each other in that way, like sending a DM to someone you don’t already know?
SB: Never say never, but probably not. We don’t need to kill email. We never set out to. Email serves so many purposes, and I think it has some real advantages, especially in being the lowest common denominator. That might sound like a negative, but I don’t mean it that way. It’s a universal standard. Anyone can run their own SMTP server or IMAP server. It’s a universal namespace, so anyone can message anyone else. But those advantages have a flip side. I still spend a lot of time on email, and I don’t expect everything to migrate, because there are new points of contact that arise over time. Introducing people is almost a canonical case of email usage for me these days.
When we imagine any two Slack users being able to DM each other, it’s only after some communication happened outside of Slack that can be a secure handshake. If you can message anyone, guess what will happen? The same thing that happens in email, which is that 99.9 percent of emails sent these days are spam. But for the incredible investment that Google and Microsoft and others have made over the last several decades in fighting spam, we wouldn’t be able to use email at all. We definitely don’t want to bring that into Slack. We’re carving out the pieces of email where we think we can make an improvement for a specific set of use cases. There’s no advantage to supplanting email completely from a business perspective. And also, there are a bunch of disadvantages, which is that we’d inherit all of this terrible crap that you have to deal with as an email provider.
They way they have positioned the aforementioned Slack Connect is:
“Email is an open front door to security threats to an organization—$12 billion in losses are caused by business email scams, and 90% of data breaches are from phishing. If you want a more secure collaboration solution for your organization, the first thing you can do is take your employees out of email and into Slack.”
So to recap : Slack wants MSFT to cut them some uh slack because they want to kill email and have a future closed monopoly? Taking this one step further, to me the original complaint that Slack filed in the EU would not stand a chance in the United States and EU seems to be quite like a hail Mary pass.
From the Washington post:
Slack said it chose to bring its case against Microsoft in Europe because it believes the European Commission has aggressively pursued anti-competition claims in tech.
“We chose Europe very deliberately,” Schellhase said. “We haven’t taken any similar action now in the U.S. But we’re having conversations with the relevant authorities as well. And we don’t rule out actions in the U.S.”
The allegations recall complaints against Microsoft from two decades ago, when U.S. and European regulators accused it of abusing its Windows operating system monopoly to crush browser rival Netscape Communications. A federal judge found in 2000 that Microsoft violated antitrust law and ordered the company snapped in two.
After an appeals court reversed the breakup order, Microsoft and the federal government settled claims in 2002, with Microsoft agreeing to, among other concessions, give computer makers more freedom to include rival software on their PCs.
Slack v. MSFT and Google. Zoom and Amazon Chime
Microsoft bundles these products with different purchase intents. If you visit the product page via search with the intent of using Teams then MSFT is happy to oblige (as shown in the screenshots above). If you otherwise visit MSFT with the “Office intent” then you will see the very same bundle. Why should MSFT not bundle this way? This is completely different from how IE bundled and as long as Slack has access to integrations/API’s that they’d need this is an unlikely winner. The only situation in which Slack has a plausible win if if they can prove that MSFT purposefully priced Teams below cost to drive competition out of the market (and then increase prices)
Looking at the larger picture, Slack is potentially using this as a pre-emptive to also counter Google which plans to release their own set of integrations (Chat, Rooms, and Meet) right within the gmail app (and the calendar app as well a few weeks ago)
From their blog post:
That's why today, we’re introducing a better home for work. G Suite now intelligently brings together the people, content, and tasks you need to make the most of your time. We’re integrating core tools like video, chat, email, files, and tasks, and making them better together, so that you can more easily stay on top of things, from anywhere.
Watch the youtube video below:
From Forbes :
“One thing we’ve heard again and again from our users is how switching between apps interrupts their flow—and their focus,” said Google vice president Javier Soltero. “That’s why in this new integrated experience, we’ve been thoughtful about how to help you work more fluidly.”
In practice, what this means is Gmail will now integrate Meet, Chat, Drive, Docs/Sheets/Slides, and Tasks as well as Rooms, which become a full-on Slack/Teams competitor. Users will be able to share and collaborate on documents in-real time while having a live video chat all without leaving their email. It’s potentially revolutionary and should aid everyone from big business to amateur football teams.
“Without leaving their email” - Take a look at Slack Apps which I’m sure most of you use. Their home page says “get work done, right within Slack”.
This to me is pretty much the same thing with a different angle. Email is pretty much the integration point and that is why Google started with email. What I mean by this is, if you are a new enterprise customer and you start with Slack, you have to add “apps” to get information, whereas on email its all already in your emails -- which is Google’s starting point. So rather than have 100’s of different integrations, you can get everything done with the four integrations that google provides(email, chat, rooms, meet). If however you prefer integrations they offer that too (see this )
This new integrated workspace also makes it easy to access your favorite third-party apps, including DocuSign, Salesforce, and Trello, so you can get updates and take action within any kind of conversation—across Gmail, Chat, and rooms.
This is exactly their point from the Google blog:
To make rooms even more useful, we’ve infused them with real-time collaboration by adding the ability to open and co-edit a document with your team without leaving Gmail. This makes it easier for you to collaborate directly within the context of where you’re doing your work in the moment—so, for example, you can chat about the changes you’re making to a document in real time, or assign a new task (or mark one complete!), without switching between screens.
Here is how the Google Calendar Integration looks:
Slack should definitely be worried big time. Two of the largest players are going after their market, have the workspace collaboration tools that are needed. Silent in all this is Zoom. Wonder what they’re thinking? Amazon also offers Amazon Chime and JioMeet blatantly copied Zoom in India.
What was once a boring, stodgy product category has now become a battleground for the largest and smallest players in the enterprise space and I think this battle will only get more interesting as time goes on.
Thank you for reading. Stay safe, be well