Could MS really build the Discord tech stack themselves though? At first blush it might be possible in theory if you look at only the key algorithms, architecture, and compute needed.
But what about actually getting the engineering headcount to execute? And to build it with enough flexibility to experiment and adapt to users? And to pick technical challenges that will actually keep the headcount engaged?
Google Plus seems to be a pretty good example of a competitor doing a copycat, doing a decent job technically, but then the product fell apart. Plus didn’t hit Facebook-scale growth, but it was wildly popular with certain niches like the CS academic community. Imagine if Plus had channels (in addition to circles), less corporate emojis, and 100% private circles. Then you’d have most of Discord, no?
But Google didn’t build into Plus that ability to iterate. And the headcount got interested in other things like AI. And Alphabet got to join cookies through unified auth to get their ad targeting more competitive with FB. So the Googlers had their giant offsite in Maui and then let Plus die.
So I don’t know if the tech stack in this Discord deal is necessarily worthless. The user engagement is probably worth more, but the software is part of the whole organism.
Theyve already solved the engineering part with Microsoft Teams. Even the UX is similar.
If they wanted to make a discord alternative, they'd just repaint MS Teams to have a more gamer-like UI.
Are you talking about their backend tech specifically? Because the MS Teams frontend is lacking far behind Discord in terms of polish. It has 5% of the features and already performs like a bloated mess. It's hard to tell how robust their backend tech is but given that opening new voice channels takes 5-10 seconds, or that they had to update the client to have more inaccurate online statuses to fix backend performance issues does not give me much confidence either.
But what about actually getting the engineering headcount to execute? And to build it with enough flexibility to experiment and adapt to users? And to pick technical challenges that will actually keep the headcount engaged?
Google Plus seems to be a pretty good example of a competitor doing a copycat, doing a decent job technically, but then the product fell apart. Plus didn’t hit Facebook-scale growth, but it was wildly popular with certain niches like the CS academic community. Imagine if Plus had channels (in addition to circles), less corporate emojis, and 100% private circles. Then you’d have most of Discord, no?
But Google didn’t build into Plus that ability to iterate. And the headcount got interested in other things like AI. And Alphabet got to join cookies through unified auth to get their ad targeting more competitive with FB. So the Googlers had their giant offsite in Maui and then let Plus die.
So I don’t know if the tech stack in this Discord deal is necessarily worthless. The user engagement is probably worth more, but the software is part of the whole organism.