◼ TECHNOLOGY Bloomberg Businessweek December 7, 202023AMAZON:
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THEBOTTOMLINE Amazonappearstobetakinga cooperative
approachwithEuropeanantitrustenforcers,whohavetheirown
reasonstoplaynice.THEBOTTOMLINE Salesforcehasbeencultivatinga rivalrywith
Microsoft for years, and its purchase of Slack is a major escalation
that will expand its reach to corporate employees.not necessarily to give small companies a boost.
Vestager has said she wishes she’d been bolder.
But her campaign against Google has changed the
atmosphere around antitrust enforcement enough
to open up other avenues to force change. She no
longer needs to score a win against Silicon Valley.
Amazon also isn’t facing one key factor that
kept the pressure on Google. While dozens of
companiesfiledcomplaintsagainstthesearch
giant,Amazonsellers—thepurportedvictimsof
itsanticompetitive behavior—have been relatively
quiet. Agustin Reyna, legal director of consumer
advocacy group BEUC, says he would support an
Amazon offer to make sure consumers get the best
choice of sellers and the lowest prices. One thing
he says wouldn’t be good either for sellers or cus-
tomers: “Endless litigation.” �Aoife White● Marc Benioff buys Slack to challenge the
world’s largest software companySalesforce Aims
At Microsoft
By spending $27.7 billion to buy Slack Technologies
Inc., Marc Benioff, Salesforce’s co-founder and
chief executive officer, is making his most aggres-
sive move yet to take on Microsoft.
Benioff sees the deal as a chance for Salesforce, a
maker of cloud-based apps for managing customer
relationships, to elevate itself to the very top of the
software industry. Marketers and account represen-
tatives already log on to Salesforce’s programs every
day, but buying Slack, an existing partner with less
than $1 billion in annual revenue, gets it onto the
desktops and smartphones of a broad new swath
of corporate employees. “We’re going to help them
to just redefine the entire industry,” Benioff said of
Slack during a conference call with analysts. “When
the moment and the opportunity arises, you have
to look and ask yourself, are you strong? Can you
do something like this? Or are you weak? Or is it a
moment where you just don’t have the swagger?”
Microsoft Corp.’s Teams product, which hosts
videoconferences, offers a workplace chatroom, and
provides automation tools, is a top rival to Slack.Salesforce will inherit the rivalry, potentially compli-
cating its own turbulent relationship with Microsoft.
Both Salesforce and Slack have tried to get regu-
lators to scrutinize Microsoft in recent years, with
Salesforce unsuccessfully urging European nations
to block Microsoft’s 2016 acquisition of LinkedIn,
the professional networking service. Microsoft
considered buying Slack before deciding in 2017 to
build Teams instead. In July, Slack asked European
Union antitrust regulators to investigate Microsoft,
claiming it unfairly foists Teams software on mil-
lions of users by distributing it for free with its
Office cloud product suite.
Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 already competes with
Salesforce in the market for software that salespeo-
ple use to manage their deal pipelines. The two
also vie for clients trying to improve productivity
with Microsoft’s Office 365 and Salesforce’s Quip,
an acquired product that is a market laggard. But
Microsoft may see Slack as a bigger threat than the
company that purchased it, says Gregg Johnson, a
former Salesforce executive. “Slack’s use case hits
at the heart of Microsoft’s information worker’s
productivitysuite,”hesays.“That’slikethejewels
inthecrownofMicrosoft.”
Salesforce’slargestdealbeforethis,buying
Tableauforabout$15 billionlast year,wasan
attempttogotoe-to-toewithMicrosoftinanalytics
software and business intelligence. In effect, the
company’s strategy has been to replicate the busi-
ness lines of its larger foe. So far, it seems to be work-
ing. Salesforce projected that its revenue could reach
as much as $25.6 billion in the next fiscal year, almost
double the company’s performance in the fiscal year
thatendedabouttwoyearsago.
ButBenioffstillseemedfarofffromhislong-
running goal for Salesforce to play a big role in
office communications. The company introduced a
Slack-like tool called Chatter at its annual user con-
ference in 2009, the same year Slack was founded.
Salesforce included Chatter with its other products
and even bought a 2011 Super Bowl ad featuring
a cartoon version of recording artist Will.i.am to
promote it, but it didn’t spark much conversation.
Slack gives Salesforce another chance, and it’s
starting from a position of strength. The two com-
panies said their vision is to “create the operating
system for the new way to work.” It was hard to
miss how much that sounded like a veiled reference
to Microsoft, maker of the most popular operat-
ing system for personal computers. �Nico Grant,
with Dina Bass$800m4000
FY’17 FY’21▼ Slack revenueESTIMATE