Microsoft's Teams overtakes Slack

Microsoft states 13 million people use its Teams group-chat platform daily compared to Slack's 10 million figure. This milestone seems particularly impressive in light of 2016 Microsoft pondering whether to acquire Slack for $8 billion dollars.

In an industry full of constant acquisitions, it's nice to see a company create its own software, even one as immensely resourced as Microsoft. Microsoft launched its own software that, two years after its 2017 launch, ended up with more users than their considered acquisition.

That fact seems impressive at first glance. Keep in mind, however, Teams is included with its Office 365 subscription. Many organizations already have an Office 365 subscription. That arrangement would cause any Office 365 subscribing organization to question paying for Slack when it already pays for Teams. Knowing this pricing scheme, Teams overtaking Slack was basically inevitable.

Certainly, no matter the pricing, people won't use bad software if a significantly better alternative exists. But sometimes good enough is good enough, especially when it's at no extra cost. Therefore, I don't believe Microsoft's announcement necessarily speaks to Teams being a better or more liked platform than Slack. Instead, this news demonstrates Teams is at least cost effective and good enough. Frankly, neither Slack nor Teams is enjoyable to use. In my experience, both platforms are merely good enough and get the job done.

Notably, if we had statistics of Google G Suite users opting for Teams instead of Slack, we would have a better data point for which communication platform organizations prefer. Here, there's no platform subscription synergy and thus, fiscal decisions become less of a factor.

At the end of the day, this news is still good news for Microsoft. Hats off to them. I look forward to the developing competition between all communication platforms.