Mission Drift

Recently, I attempted to purchase a Chrome Industries messenger bag to replace the one I‘d been using for the past decade or so. It was fine, but it was showing its age. Fraying inner-lining? Check. Seams coming apart? Double-check.

I loved my Chrome bag, the Buran II, which was fairly massive but super-comfortable and an easy carry. If I could have just bought the same bag all over again, I would have. But I couldn’t find it. Instead, I got its direct successor, the Buran III, which, on paper looked like an improved version of the bag I had purchased at a Chrome retail store years prior.

But things have changed, and when I got the Buran III, I found myself holding a bag that on the surface looked very similar from the outside, but featured a number of changes within. What was previously a highly-flexible bag was now one with a too-short strap with too many pockets and not nearly enough space in the right places. Put an iPad or laptop in the wrong spot and the bag would feel absolutely stuffed even when it wasn’t. Plus, if you want more convenient bags, you have to buy their accessories. Worst of all, when I put my laptop into the dedicated laptop sleeve, it barely fit. I returned it immediately.

So now I’m stranded with a brand whose products I’ve loved but whose modern offerings no longer fit my needs. I tried buying a cheap alternative, but I was spoiled by the quality of the bag I already owned. My current play: I decided to buy a new-old-stock version of the same bag I already own, but in a different color, off of eBay, that I found essentially by chance. Fingers crossed that one works.

Why did this newer Chrome bag offer such a disappointing experience? I think if you were to point at any one thing, it would probably be ownership. The original owners sold it nearly 20 years ago (they now operate the boutique bag-makers Mission Workshop, whose products look promising, but out of my price range), and while the result was mostly the same at first, it is clear that the company (which is now part of a conglomerate) has changed. The bags are no longer made in the U.S. anymore. The boutique shops with the onsite repair staff, like the one I bought mine at? Minus one tiny shop in Portland, a thing of the past, as far as I can tell. And the bright, diverse colors that defined Chrome‘s look for a long time? Long gone.

I think this is what can happen when you see mission drift, where you start one place and end up in another, less relevant place. And ownership shifts are often a catalyst for that drift. It doesn’t happen right away—it takes time. But gradually, things can change dramatically as the momentary sync between ownership and mission gets lost.

That’s what I think happened to Skype. That service, which was developed in the early 2000s and often sold itself as a useful alternative for long-distance international calling, carried a warm reputation among many of its users. (I made a point of checking in on podcaster and radio host Peter Anthony Holder, who for many years was the biggest Skype enthusiast I knew.)

But its ownership changed multiple times, each time losing something that made it unique and valuable to its target audience. By the time Microsoft bought it in the early 2010s, the company saw it as an inroad to modernize its instant-messaging offerings. Problem was, the messaging sector kept evolving, and Microsoft felt like it had to keep up. Of late, the company has leaned in hard on Teams, and has been removing features from Skype at the same time.

When it was announced Skype was closing on Friday, it was implied it was because it wasn’t as feature-packed as Teams. But that wasn’t what Skype was trying to be—that was something Microsoft foisted onto this brand. Over time, it’s clear that Microsoft fell out of sync with why people used Skype … and the market responded by encouraging those people to move to other services like Discord, Zoom, and Signal. And, at least according to Microsoft, Teams.

“In the past two years, the number of minutes spent in meetings by consumer users of Teams has grown 4X, reflecting the value Teams brings to everyday communication and collaboration,” the company claimed in a recent blog post. (Personally, I’m skeptical.)

Microsoft drifted from Skype because what it wanted from Skype was ultimately not what Skype was.

We often see this in traditional media, too. This past week, Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, who had largely managed the newspaper in a hands-off fashion for most of his ownership reign, decided that he was going to do a sudden reset of the company’s priorities on its editorial pages, favoring a free-markets, personal liberties approach. (Dude, just buy Reason.)

I think that this is often what happens with corporate acquisitions. Even if nothing changes immediately, it can cause longer-term shifts that are more subtle and slower-moving, but by the time they happen, still feel dramatic. The “sync” between owner and acquirer is only temporary if you choose the wrong owner. We got a lot of good years out of the Bezos version of the Post before his recent shifts. But it doesn’t make the shifts feel any less terrible.

(Quick disclosure that I used to work for The Washington Post Express.)

Recently, a Chrome bag built in the late ’90s appeared on eBay with an asking price of $1,999. It is essentially unrecognizable from the one I fell in love with. The shape is roughly the same, but it is missing some key elements of the modern brand. The logo is completely different. The bag is a bright hue of yellow, with tarp on the outside, rather than modern-day nylon. And it doesn’t have the famed seat-belt-buckle design that is so closely associated with the Chrome brand that it might as well be in its logo. Cool as hell, but if this was the bag I was looking for, it might not have fit my needs.

The mission drift, to put it another way, goes both ways. And maybe the moment where customer and brand perfectly meet is fleeting.