[dkyc]

It's valid to think of this as Microsoft sort of squandering a unique opportunity to become the ubiquitous video conferencing standard by not investing in Skype, back when it had a market-leading position. Another way to look at this is that even though they bungled this, they still managed to become that solution through Teams. Even though they failed to compete with Skype, got leapfrogged by Slack, and then again by Zoom, they still manage to come out on top, at least in corporate America.

You can argue that they could have been Zoom, too, but looking at Zoom's 22bn market capitalization I don't think Microsoft sheds many tears about that thought. It's more a testament to the incredible market power and distribution muscle Microsoft has, that they can afford this many bad decisions and still win in a way.

[orev]

The way Microsoft “won” with Teams was through monopolistic bundling it into Windows and Office. To this day most people don’t like using Teams for chat, but because it’s there by default there’s not a good reason to go through the hassle of bringing on another product.

[basisword]

>> To this day most people don’t like using Teams for chat

People will say the same thing about Slack, email, and any other messaging system they are forced to use. People love to complain, especially if they're coming to a product after using a different one at a previous job.

[dumbledoren]

And that will last until the regulators start cracking down on that monopoly like they started cracking down on Google...

[strunz]

They gained it back by basically giving Teams away for free and getting companies to say "we're already paying for this bundle, so let's stop paying for Zoom/Slack." They still missed out on billions which they'll try to claim back over years of slow price raises (until the competition lowers prices and/or becomes more competitive).