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Operating Systems Windows

Microsoft Will Bundle Its Rival To Slack Into Windows 11 (bloomberg.com) 61

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Microsoft, which has unveiled a new version of Windows for the first time in six years, said it will integrate its Teams chat and videoconferencing software directly into the operating system. From a report: Teams has seen a huge surge in users during the pandemic, boosting Microsoft in a product category where it's been trying to catch up with Slack and Zoom. The latest personal computer operating system, Windows 11, also features a new design and will offer changes to the app store.
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Microsoft Will Bundle Its Rival To Slack Into Windows 11 More

Microsoft Will Bundle Its Rival To Slack Into Windows 11

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  • Haven't we been here before? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Vegan Cyclist ( 1650427 ) on Thursday June 24, 2021 @12:02PM (#61516908) Homepage

    Didn't MS baking Internet Explorer into the OS cause a lot of trouble?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      Is there going to be a matching server version to Win 11?

      One reason to run the server version is to avoid the bloatware.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Of course there is a server version. It comes with Candy Crush and advertisements in the Start Menu, a must-have for all system administrators.

        • This was a joke that we made when they first moved the Windows 8 start screen abomination into server - "Great, now I can check my Xbox Live bullshit while doing maintenance on a SQL server."

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by EvilSS ( 557649 )
        Not really, but sort of. Server 2022 seems to be on it's own development branch now. It's basically an updated server 2019. But since W11 is basically an updated version of W10...

        That said, MS has been pushing against Server with the desktop experience, wanting people to go with core instead, so don't expect the daily driver experience to get better going forward if you want to try to use it as a desktop OS. Honestly I was surprised it was even an option in the current preview builds.

    • Re:Haven't we been here before? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by BrainJunkie ( 6219718 ) on Thursday June 24, 2021 @12:27PM (#61517014)
      It did cause a lot of trouble. The question from Microsoft's perspective is whether it was worth the trouble, which is a much broader consideration than just looking at dollars.

      Almost certainly the answer to that is Yes. They enjoyed a period where their browser which ran only on their OS was the dominant one. It was a big factor in effectively killing Netscape and artificially stunted the growth of several other competitors. There was the direct cost for them to litigate the anti-trust actions it brought on, some small damage to their reputation, and it got them in the sights of trustbusters all over the world....but they've laid somewhat low since then and would almost certainly be willing to push in this direction again.

    • The Genie has so left the bottle.
      However Microsoft Windows is not as dominate as it was back in 1998. People use OS X, iOS, Android, Gnu/Linux often interchangeably. As well we See that Google Chrome Dominates the browser market now, over the embedded Edge. People in general will not fuss over adding a 3rd party software if they feel it will be better for them.

      The biggest issue in 1998 with embedded IE, was the quick load time to open the browser, where on a PC back in 1998 a common PC which was a Single

      • Also, downloading an app today takes like 30 seconds. In 1998 it could have been hours over an analog modem dial-up connection.

        • Over viasat it still takes hours to download apps, you insensitive clod.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
            Yes but in most of the western world satellite internet is something used by rather few (percentage wise j internet users ws dialup beeing the major internet connection type in 1998, at least ouside metro areas
    • And how long have Macs and iOS devices included FaceTime?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nucrash ( 549705 )

      Yes, but this time they understand the political process and know that if they keep enough politicians funded, Congress will ignore any monopolistic practices.

    • No. And you'd have a hard time claiming this is some unique monopolistic move when they can just walk into court, pull up a Mac or iPad/iPhone, and click on Facetime, then walk out.
    • That was before they started making political contributions. It's all good now.

    • Didn't MS baking Internet Explorer into the OS cause a lot of trouble?

      Seems to have been no long term consequences for them. Now on Windows 10 if you click on the weather app in the toolbar it will load Edge even if you set your default browser to Chrome or Firefox. And the Start menu's search uses Bing, about all you can do is turn off search.

      Bundling and anticompetitive behavior is tolerated in the tech industry by governments all over the world. It might be the US throwing its weight around to protect US business interests, or it might be the smell of money that even the E

  • I can't even understand the headline. What does "Bundle Its Rival To Slack Into Windows" even mean? Apparently they have an app called "Rival"? and they're bundling it to Slack? and inserting the bundle into Windows? Or maybe they're bundling the app Rival, and in the process of bundling it they are going to slack into Windows?

  • This is why they needed to be divided up between the OS and the applications

  • And no Slack customers will care. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MachineShedFred ( 621896 ) on Thursday June 24, 2021 @12:19PM (#61516972) Journal

    This isn't a browser where you can just import bookmarks and history and call it a day - the thing that keeps companies using Slack, is the channel and personal chat histories, and being able to quickly search out things that were said months ago that someone may have "starred". And the massive library of webhook and app integrations.

    Having to download a client is the smallest of barriers to switching - this will make zero difference.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Daetrin ( 576516 )
      It's probably less about convincing people to switch than enticing people/companies who haven't already committed to something yet. Slack is reportedly used by 750,000 companies (according to google.) Which sounds like a lot, but even just in the US alone, according to bizjournals.com, "The Census Bureau estimated in 2016 that there were about 7.7 million establishments across the country where at least one paid employee worked."

      Obviously a lot of those companies are very small, but a company with say, t
    • None of those things are hard to import on a basic level. If there’s integrations with third party apps then yea that won’t be able to migrate. Never underestimate the power of free or ad based service, it has been dominating almost every industry from gaming, tv, movies and more.

  • Didn't Microsoft spend billions to buy Skype? Now they're starting a new video chat app? That no has heard of? When they already own Skype? Which everyone has heard of? Smart.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by chill ( 34294 )

      Teams is what the moved Skype for Business into, and only the hip kiddies haven't heard of it. Everyone in the business world who uses MS Office knows exactly what it is.

      • And before that we had Lync.

        It's not that easy to compare the technologies themselves since so much depends on whether they are adequately resourced for the number of clients, playing well with the firewall, and so on.

        But for sure, the Teams meetings with hundreds of video clients we're seeing now were unheard of if you go back as far as lync.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dysmal ( 3361085 )

          I laugh at how Skype For Business was actually running lync.exe

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mtmra70 ( 964928 )

            Temas is still Lync/S4B. If you look at the PowerShell commands/results you will see a ton of Lync/S4B processes and such.

      • > Everyone in the business world who uses MS Office knows exactly what [MS Teams] is.

        An ugly and barely usable pile of shit.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Microsoft has recently created a version of Teams for the home user. I assume that Teams is the replacement of the Skype app bundled with Windows 10. I understand that Skype has features not available in Teams, like placing phone calls. However, the integration with other apps, like the Contacts apps was underwhelming.

  • Why am I not surprised? Ah yes, because they got a slap on the wrist after the famous anti-trust lawsuit, so the obvious thing for them to do is to do it all over again.

    It'll be amusing to hear why exactly a video-conferencing app is an integral part of the operating system.

    Don't get me wrong, Teams is actually pretty decent. After fucking up Skype, it seems the 3rd version (with a different name) is the charm again. But the unusual rapid adoption of Teams during the pandemic already made it clear there's q

    • It'll be amusing to hear why exactly a video-conferencing app is an integral part of the operating system.

      Pandemic, telecommuting, both covered quite well on slashdot.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tom ( 822 )

        That's why it's suddenly a hot topic.

        It doesn't explain why Teams, of all the offers on the market, is seing a huge growth in popularity. It doesn't explain why MS has to integrate it into the OS.

    • Weird, maybe ask Apple about Facetime? Or Google about Meet on Chromebooks.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tom ( 822 )

        I don't see either of those suddenly out of nowhere showing up everywhere. I have seen that with Teams. All of a sudden, at least a dozen companies I've done business with the past year switched to Teams. That's a highly unusual coordinated choice. No other conferencing software has had such an effect during the pandemic.

  • News? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SlashbotAgent ( 6477336 ) on Thursday June 24, 2021 @12:27PM (#61517018)

    Microsoft already jammed Teams down every Microsoft 365 use's throat by installing Teams as an "update" and setting it to autostart full screen every time people log into Windows.

    Teams is a pile of shit. The entire chat to replace email, but actually to just add to the email, concept is garbage.

    Teams is not a productivity tool, Teams is ANOTHER time suck.

    • More to the point, it's a non-trivial application bundled with the OS that I (probably) won't ever use -- like One Drive. Hopefully, it will be uninstallable or, at least, can be completely disabled.

    • Worse, Teams is developed in JavaScript (technically TypeScript) and comes with all the inefficiencies. It performs terribly.

      • Unless this was a long-term strategic play in relation to Electron or something, this is just gratuitous user abuse. The quarterly outlays for building and maintaining a native Team app would not have been significantly different. They have the resources to not build shit, yet they continue to do so. Their corporate heart/culture is colder than a well diggers asshole.

  • The Future Is Stupid (Score:4, Interesting)

    by BeerFartMoron ( 624900 ) on Thursday June 24, 2021 @12:29PM (#61517030)

    And Dell will sell you a "Video Conferencing Monitor" with a Teams button [dell.com]!

    Team up. Seamlessly.

    One button. Tons of benefits: Introducing the world’s first 24-inch FHD video conferencing monitor certified for Microsoft Teams, purpose-built so you can launch the Teams application, join meetings and respond to notifications with a press of a button. Plus, there is an LED indicator to notify you about a Teams alert.

    • There are still plenty of office workers who like to take notes on paper, I don't see why you would call this stupid. Its a decent panel with some nice functionality built into the chin so that you can control the meeting right on the monitor instead of grabbing a kb+m every time you want to interact with the call controls. If you don't like it, that's fine. Dell makes some other monitors you might like, or you can buy somebody else's instead if you don't like Dell. This is just Dell testing the free m

    • And Dell will sell you a "Video Conferencing Monitor" with a Teams button [dell.com]!

      Erm why is that a surprise to you? There are literally thousands of devices on the market with Lync buttons. Lync phones, Lync headsets, Lync integrated speakers, and many Dell Ultrasharp monitors with Lync buttons.

      It simply makes sense to integrate a button into hardware to answer and mute calls. The big problem is that MS has done a shithouse job of providing a Teams API compared to what they provided for Lync.

  • I know for the purposes of this discussion, "better" doesn't matter... but I use both at work and Slack is much better. Particularly so if you have channels shared with various customers.

  • Wow, they're flailing (Score:4, Interesting)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Thursday June 24, 2021 @12:49PM (#61517128)

    This isn't like the old Internet Explorer move at all. Unlike a web browser, it's not as if you can just open Teams instead of Slack or Zoom and seamlessly do the same stuff.

    • Flailing is not what I'd call it at all. Teams already has 10x the active users that Slack does.

      If you want to call it something then call it an anticompetitive move to further cement their already absolutely dominant lead in the business chat industry.

  • That software is really heavy. Or they have a new improved Teams version, or the 4Gb RAM PC generation is over.

  • Slowing down your OS, one computer at a time.
    Really, we use it in my (sic!) company, but itâ(TM)s a slow behemoth built of molasses, shite and wet paper and the best thing about it is that one can still remove it.

  • It's just the chat and video call functionality, not the full Teams client software. It's replacing Skype (finally). If you want full teams you still need to download it, although it is coming to the MS app store, so yay?
  • Had a job interview recently, they asked me to do it via video using Teams. They sent me a link for the scheduled meeting, and asked me to install the software to verify that my webcam/audio works well before the meeting. Fine, I'll install the software to check beforehand. But I can't check unless I have an account. Fine, I'll create an account. So I created a random outlook.com email address to sign up for this. Of course I already had an email address, but I don't want to give out that information. Signe
  • The Teams I know is not a place where you can join a public group and chat about stuff.

    Or did that change?
  • Calling Teams rival to Slack is kind of cheaky. Slack has like 99% of functionality I need - directly necessary for effective work. Teams has some 5%, only basic functions, that allows us to call it chat. That's it, the rest of functions are bloatware. Not to mention all the bugs. Teams could not send your message. What do you mean by that? Or images not showing up. Startup processor usage skyhigh for many minutes. A lot of smaller bugs. It is like comparing a rock on a stick to Vipukirves axe.

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