Microsoft announced the launch of Microsoft Designer.
It opened a new wound and more people went on social media to talk about Microsoft’s dominance and shameless copying of successful products.
The case often brought up was Slack. The platform aims to change the way we communicate in work, to replace the cumbersome email with messaging.
It started in 2009 and after the platform got traction, Microsoft launched Teams in 2017 and officially announced it was directly competing with Slack.
Acquiring Slack was considered but was put off as Bill Gates suggested to improve Skype for Business instead.
Teams was bundled with the Office 365 subscription at no additional cost. Considering that many corporates were already using Microsoft Office, the adoption for Teams skyrocketed.
Microsoft Teams surpassed Slack in terms of the number of daily active users since 2019, and achieved 5 times more users than Slack by 2020.
Slack did a direct listing in 2019 at a valuation of $15.7 billion and was eventually acquired by Salesforce for $27 billion in 2021. Not a bad exit after all.
We found similar issue with Zoom where it was very good at video conferencing but now struggled to expand beyond it. Microsoft Teams could do that and more and it was free for Office subscribers.
Another important consideration is about security as we are in an era of cyber attacks. Microsoft has always been a trustworthy software partner and there is just too much risk for large corporate management to assume when switching to a new software like Slack or Zoom.
Notion is another product that is getting traction. It is an all-in-one collaborative productivity platform where you can use it for group to-dos, project management, planning and even a wiki for the company.
Microsoft copied again by launching Loop in 2021 with a user interface that is eerily similar to Notion.
Again, they are using the same playbook by bundling Loop into the family of Office 365 apps.
Canva is one of our beloved image creator tools. We are a happy paid user. We could do YouTube thumbails, Instagram posts, marketing collaterals, get stock images and more, all in one platform. The key is that there are many beautiful design templates that made it easy for even the least artistic user.
Now Microsoft Designer is attempting to kill it. The software isn’t available now but one can join the waitlist.
Microsoft is also incorporating the powerful text-to-image AI, DALL-E 2, into Designer. This will be a very attractive proposition for the masses who may lack the design flair or even for experienced designers who want to save time in creating fast turnaround work.
Called Microsoft a bully if you want. But at least it isn’t standing still and risk being irrelevant.
One thing to note is that the scrutiny of big tech’s monopolistic powers has been rising in recent years. Microsoft may risked a repeat of the 1998 antitrust lawsuit in which it was accused of unfairly bundling Internet Explorer with Windows to boost adoption.
Let’s see how far can Microsoft push the dominance for now.
