Did Microsoft copy Airtable?

[Aswanth_Selva_P]

Microsoft copied Airtable? See this Microsoft Lists walkthrough (a new app announced today). See how similar the mobile app is. Also, the conditional formatting and card views.

[ScottWorld]

Wow. Unreal. It visually looks like an exact copy of Airtable. They have absolutely no shame at Microsoft. Never have, never will.

[JonathanBowen]

Interesting. Definitely some similarities, although the key thing that I noticed as I was fast-forwarding through the video is that it is very 1-dimensional. No concept, as least as far as I could see, over a linked table which is one of the Airtable super-powers.

[Aswanth_Selva_P]

Exactly, @ScottWorld. Doing what MSFT does best. Copying.

[Aswanth_Selva_P]

@JonathanBowen Obviously, they aren’t making a relational DB. They have full fledged legacy stuff like MS Access.
But, I simply couldn’t see past the resemblance to all the pretty UI elements and features from Airtable in MS Lists.

Interesting to see how this will pan out.

MSFT being the grand daddy of productivity tools is certainly watching newer innovative players like Airtable, Coda, Notion, etc.

Also, one neat feature in that video is automations. Like send an email when a new row is added or a field is edited. Would like to see that in Airtable.

Interesting times ahead for the world of productivity software.

[ScottWorld]

Doing what MSFT does best. Copying.

Yep, exactly!!

Also, one neat feature in that video is automations. Like send an email when a new row is added or a field is edited. Would like to see that in Airtable.

This does seem to be the lowest-hanging fruit that is most missing from Airtable. Interesting that Microsoft added it in FIRST, perhaps to try to steal some marketshare away from Airtable in the area in which it is lacking.

[kuovonne]

Aswanth_Selva_Pragat:

They have full fledged legacy stuff like MS Access.

Legacy is an apt way of describing MS Access. But MS Access has some serious limitations. For one thing, it only runs on Windows. Microsoft tried bringing Access to the web with Sharepoint, but it was a crippled set of features that never really took off and was eventually discontinued. So, Microsoft has wanted a modern version of Access, but so far hasn’t figured out how to connect all the dots to make it happen.

Aswanth_Selva_Pragat:

Also, one neat feature in that video is automations. Like send an email when a new row is added or a field is edited. Would like to see that in Airtable.

Built-in support for automation would be nice, but it seems like Airtable is currently happy to pass on that functionality to Zapier and other services that use the Airtable API.

[David_Isaac]

I’m guessing the product owner(s) at Airtable mentally abandoned the O365 user market long ago when they opted not to provide a connector for Power Automate/Flow. Too bad…we are in that group, and I like Airtable, but automation with Flow would be very tempting for our lists associated with company processes.