No sooner had Microsoft Corp. announced Microsoft Teams, a Slack-like collaboration tool rolled into Office 365, than it got a response from the company Teams apparently is targeting.

Slack Technologies Inc. fired back at Microsoft in a full-page ad in the New York Times that began, “Dear Microsoft.” The letter starts like a disingenuous compliment from a competing colleague: “Great news,” it said. “We’re genuinely excited.”

The ad is reminiscent of Apple’s 1981 “Welcome IBM, Seriously” ad, an equally passive-aggressive statement to IBM following the release of its first personal computer.

Slack then slaps itself on the back explaining how it knew such a platform would find success and that others would attempt to replicate it. Facebook Workplace was recently announced, another contender in the work collaboration space.

“It’s harder than it looks,” warns Slack, explaining, “Building a product that allows for significant improvements in how people communicate requires a degree of thoughtfulness and craftsmanship that is not common in the development of enterprise software.”

Slack’s message: It’s understanding the companies and the people inside them that counts, not just making software.

Slack then becomes philosophical, and seeming to patronize Microsoft as a heartless conglomerate alienated from the white collar workers it provides products to.  Slack says it talks to workers, it has a “shared purpose” and these small details “make big differences.”

The letter then becomes much more of an ad, extolling Slack’s open platform and the “elegant and creative ways to weave third-party software workflows right into Slack.”

Slack ends the missive with a fairly mawkish flurry about love – something Slack insinuates Microsoft does not put into its products. To give your customers happiness, says Slack, you must give them love.

It all seems tongue in cheek, or rather smarmy, but Slack reminds Microsoft at the very end of something quite practical: Slack is everywhere, and it says it’s “just getting started.” Microsoft will no doubt feel it can affect its contender’s longevity.

Photo credit:Gustavo da Cunha Pimenta via Flickr