Exclusive: Microsoft is finally shutting down Skype in May
-
Wait.....MICROSOFT owns skype??? Was this always the case, or did they do something stupid where they bought skype during the heyday, and immediately tank it just a few years before the pandemic? Because Zoom really had a field day in 2020.
So, which is it? Did they always own it, or were they a buyer of an established skype that tanked it like Verizon did with tumblr? Or that other company did with myspace?
If I remember correctly MS bought it from eBay. And then promptly did their best job at taking a dump on it. Nothing MS did to Skype was good, disabled encryption by default, removed features, made the network so terrible that they actually make you consider teams.
At one point Skype was the only game in town for personal web calls and chats, in the US at least. MS pissed that away, because killing competition and owning patents is more lucrative than creating good products and services. -
If I remember correctly MS bought it from eBay. And then promptly did their best job at taking a dump on it. Nothing MS did to Skype was good, disabled encryption by default, removed features, made the network so terrible that they actually make you consider teams.
At one point Skype was the only game in town for personal web calls and chats, in the US at least. MS pissed that away, because killing competition and owning patents is more lucrative than creating good products and services.Also forced people to use a Microsoft account to use it, and they definitely messed something up in the migration.
-
They've owned it since 2011. When they did buy it, they had Lync, which sucked pretty bad. Now they have Teams, probably the result of merging Lync and Skype.
Now they have Teams, probably the result of merging Lync and Skype.
And the resulting horror show is just as bad as you'd imagine to
-
If I remember correctly MS bought it from eBay. And then promptly did their best job at taking a dump on it. Nothing MS did to Skype was good, disabled encryption by default, removed features, made the network so terrible that they actually make you consider teams.
At one point Skype was the only game in town for personal web calls and chats, in the US at least. MS pissed that away, because killing competition and owning patents is more lucrative than creating good products and services.The biggest thing they did to kill it was banner ads in the client. The second those showed up, all my friends and myself instantly jumped to the new, fledgling Discord.
-
Remember to break this news gently to your elderly parents.
Skype is what I usually use to video chat with them but I recently got my mom to download Signal, which is nice
-
This post did not contain any content.
Iâve been using Skype for cheaper international calls to family that still relies on phones instead of video calls etc. Iâll need to check what happens with my credit. Any recommendations for an alternative?
-
The biggest thing they did to kill it was banner ads in the client. The second those showed up, all my friends and myself instantly jumped to the new, fledgling Discord.
Which very quickly started to add the occasional banner and constantly push nitro. It fucking sucks.
Is there a defederated version which doesn't constantly drop quality and connection like discord does?
-
This post did not contain any content.
Good ol capitalism breeding innovation. And then acquiring the innovation, cloning it poorly and killing it off so the market has no access to the product and service they wanted. Innovative!
-
Amazing how Skype went from a verb to the shadow realm
Would seem almost intentional given the size and success of the company. How do you fuck something like that up so badly? Seems like one of those Embrace, Extend, Extinguish deals or similar
-
Would seem almost intentional given the size and success of the company. How do you fuck something like that up so badly? Seems like one of those Embrace, Extend, Extinguish deals or similar
Skype was always shit. It was being first to market that made it popular. It was one of the first ways to get cheaper and free informational calling. By the time MS purchased it vent and ts became popular as well as zoom and others entering the space.
-
Skype was always shit. It was being first to market that made it popular. It was one of the first ways to get cheaper and free informational calling. By the time MS purchased it vent and ts became popular as well as zoom and others entering the space.
One of the things skype did first and best was decent noise filtering, transforming peoples shit audio equipment to something you could listen to for more than 5 minutes without going crazy.
-
This post did not contain any content.
Well that sucks, I use it a lot but I will not use Teams.
-
One of the things skype did first and best was decent noise filtering, transforming peoples shit audio equipment to something you could listen to for more than 5 minutes without going crazy.
For sure, Skype/eBay did a lot right at first. But by the time MS bought it, it was already falling from favor.
-
This post did not contain any content.
That sucks. This is my main way of video-calling my family overseas. It's also gonna suck for people who use it for 2fa for US accounts (though I think most don't work with Skype and known voip numbers anymore so maybe not a huge deal).
It also sucks for those of us who need to call US numbers from overseas. I need to call a tax prep company and would rather not pay a fortune. Google also cracked down on those proven to be fully overseas with a voice number.
-
Iâve been using Skype for cheaper international calls to family that still relies on phones instead of video calls etc. Iâll need to check what happens with my credit. Any recommendations for an alternative?
Google Voice is good. I use it to call from the USA to Australia which is only $0.01/minute.
-
This post did not contain any content.
I'm still sad they got rid of MSN Messenger in favour of Skype. MSN had superior video and audio quality.
I had so many international friends on MSN Messenger that I have no idea how to contact any more.
-
Teams has a lot of Skype references under the hoodâŚ
Well yeah âshutting downâ here is more like âabsorbedâ into teams. They donât make âenoughâ money from consumers to keep it going, but they do from their teams subscriptions. The tech is and will further be ported to teams and the branding changed.
-
Skype was always shit. It was being first to market that made it popular. It was one of the first ways to get cheaper and free informational calling. By the time MS purchased it vent and ts became popular as well as zoom and others entering the space.
I agree with you here. They just never kept up with what people wanted or needed out of a communications platform. When Discord showed it was more versatile nearly 10 years ago, my whole group switched and never looked back.
Skype call sounds still bring specific kinds of nostalgia though.
-
Iâve been using Skype for cheaper international calls to family that still relies on phones instead of video calls etc. Iâll need to check what happens with my credit. Any recommendations for an alternative?
I made a comment about this on another thread, see this comment.
-
Iâve been using Skype for cheaper international calls to family that still relies on phones instead of video calls etc. Iâll need to check what happens with my credit. Any recommendations for an alternative?
I'm not a fan of Meta, but all of my international family rely heavily on WhatsApp.
It also seems that Signal supports VoIP calling, but I have not tried it.
