Microsoft to buy Slack for $8 billion

Microsoft would have had plans to acquire communication service Slack for an amount of eight billion dollars, converted 7.2 billion euros. However, the plan fell through as the company would like to focus on further developing Skype.

Techcrunch reports that it has learned from a source that the acquisition did not go through, because Microsoft CEOs Satya Nadella and Bill Gates, among others, were not convinced of the plans. They would prefer to see their own communication software Skype get more functionality to compete with Slack. The company was estimated at a value of 2.5 billion euros in early 2015 according to Techcrunch; other figures go as far as a value of up to 4.5 billion euros.

The question is why Microsoft has considered such an action, since it could set up a comparable platform with SharePoint, Yammer, Skype and Lync itself. The reason for the plans could be Slack’s rapidly growing popularity. The many integration options with other applications would also make Slack an attractive choice for business users.

Just this week, the company announced it will be adding voice and video chat features to its platform, which will be available to its 2.3 million daily active users in the near term. In their own words, these features are being added, among other things, to better compete with Skype and Hangouts. It is not clear from the information from Techcrunch when the plans around the Slack takeover were played within Microsoft.