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Microsoft is killing Skype

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Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#121

Post by nickdothutton »

bayindirh wrote: post #106
drooopy wrote: post #101

The way Microsoft and Skype missed their opportunity during the pandemic to maintain or even expand their lead in video conferencing, while allowing a complete unknown (outside of the corporate world, at least) like Zoom to become the dominant platform, should be studied in business schools. The term 'Skype' is so synonymous with video calling that, based on personal experience, it is still used in place of FaceTime…

I think Microsoft killed it the moment when they made everything move through central servers before everyone had good network connection, everywhere. It was P2P before. It was slow, laggy and unstable for most of the time. Also, they didn't invest in the transportation codecs much. After it's marred, they didn't try to mend it much, and when it started to work well due to better bandwidth, they didn't push it back a…

Easier to monitor if centralised.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#122

Post by pembrook »

victorbjorklund wrote: post #112
dijit wrote: post #29

End of an era, but the writing was on the wall. I have fond memories of using skype to contact my friends and family circa-2011 when I was working for Nokia in Finland. Ironically, microsoft killed nokia the same way microsoft killed skype, an acquisition and then strangulation. if nothing else, it’s at least two times the european tech sector was actively harmed by US tech giants… which isn’t much, but weird that it…

Not true. Nokia was already dying. Microsoft made a bad attempt to save Nokia when the heart had already stopped.

Same for Skype.

Yes, most acquirers bungle the acquisition (regardless of nationality), but the reason these companies decide to sell in the first place is because their future prospects on their own don’t look great.

Skype was a consumer success but consumers violently hate paying for software (just read HN).

The market for video calls-as-a-business is entirely B2B. Skype with their fun whimsical branding and non-sales dominant culture couldn’t hack it. Plus, big dumb enterprises hate screening new vendors, so Microsoft/Cisco/etc were always going to win that space.

Zoom basically swooped in later able to take all the learnings from Skype and go B2B from the start.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#123

Post by bayindirh »

nickdothutton wrote: post #121
bayindirh wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Microsoft killed it the moment when they made everything move through central servers before everyone had good network connection, everywhere. It was P2P before. It was slow, laggy and unstable for most of the time. Also, they didn't invest in the transportation codecs much. After it's marred, they didn't try to mend it much, and when it started to work well due to better bandwidth, they didn't push it back a…

Easier to monitor if centralised.

Yes, everyone and their Windows installs and their _NSAKEY guessed the reason was that.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#124

Post by l33tman »

OvbiousError wrote: post #108
drooopy wrote: post #101

The way Microsoft and Skype missed their opportunity during the pandemic to maintain or even expand their lead in video conferencing, while allowing a complete unknown (outside of the corporate world, at least) like Zoom to become the dominant platform, should be studied in business schools. The term 'Skype' is so synonymous with video calling that, based on personal experience, it is still used in place of FaceTime…

Almost everything I do for work uses teams, so I can't say MS missed any boats. It's spectacular how pervasive teams is given how universally reviled it is. I'd personally switch back to slack in a heartbeat for instance.

Don't know about Slack's videoconf, but Slack's cheap insistence that we pay a rip-off amount of money per month for storing some TEXT messages more than 90 days has continuously degraded my appreciation for it over the last years to the level of me hating it now.

They're so cheap. Just put a quota on total storage or something, that actually map to their costs..

We have a Slack for a shared office of 10 people or so, we use it to like ask each other for where to go for lunch or general stuff, it must cost them $0.001/month to host, but you continuously get a banner that says PAY TO UNLOCK THESE EXCITING OLD MESSAGES all over it, and when you check what they want, they want some exorbitant amount like $10/month/user so $100/month for a lunch-synchronization tool. For $100/month I can store like 5 TB on S3, that's a lot of texts.

I'm genuinely curious why they don't have some other payment option, I'd be happy to pay $1/month/user for some basic level if they just don't want freeloaders there. Well, I wouldn't be happy.. but still :)

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#125

Post by 3D30497420 »

bayindirh wrote: post #118
dcminter wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I think their big, incomprehensibly stupid manoeuver was the Skype vs Skype for Business (Link) split. Had they merged them into a single client that could speak either protocol and share contact lists the story would have been very different. Why are megacorps so incomprehensibly clueless about this? Is the money pit so deep that they knock each other in while in-fighting for control on the edge of it?

> Is the money pit so deep that they knock each other in while in-fighting for control on the edge of it? I remember somebody saying "Micorosft is an amalgam of different power centers and dynamics. Some people inside genuinely loves open source and wants to be part of that, and some hate it like it's the evil itself. So, there's in-fighting and power struggles in many areas in Microsoft". I think the comment came af…

Obligatory "Internal structure of tech companies": https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/6jw33z/int...

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#126

Post by SXX »

Well this is really sucks. What other cheap and reliable real-phone calling services are there with working CallerID?

Calling to airlines, banks and other institutions is still needed and I still use Skype for this from time to time.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#127

Post by kombine »

wuschel wrote: post #62
edwcross wrote: post #32

Microsoft killed Skype for me a few months ago: the Linux version simply stopped working, and unless I install a Snap-based one (which I cannot do remotely on family computers), it's now useless. Also, my Skype credit simply disappeared from the account (granted, it had been sitting idle for a few years, but still). WhatsApp, Signal and similar apps completely replaced Skype, which stopped innovating years ago. Other…

Skype was very useful to call landlines from or two countries e.g. Europe to India. To my knowledge, Whatsapp et al do not fill this niche. Is there another solution that has this functionality?

I used to use Skype to call my grandfather's landline back home, until he passed away two years ago. I just opened Skype to scroll through our call history all the way to 2018. It will be gone soon just like he did.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#128

Post by 7bit »

drooopy wrote: post #101

The way Microsoft and Skype missed their opportunity during the pandemic to maintain or even expand their lead in video conferencing, while allowing a complete unknown (outside of the corporate world, at least) like Zoom to become the dominant platform, should be studied in business schools. The term 'Skype' is so synonymous with video calling that, based on personal experience, it is still used in place of FaceTime…

What? Teams was and is everywhere. The opportunity was taken so hard, the EU ruled that Teams must be decoupled from the Office Suite and Windows because it was near impossible to not have or use Teams. All that happened because and during the pandemic.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#129

Post by [deleted] »

tonyhart7 wrote: post #70
riffraff wrote: post #11

Skype got me through my first few years living in a different country from my family/friends/girlfriend/enployer. There was a time when whole companies were on Skype the way they're now on Slack. It's incredible how badly Microsoft mismanaged it.

"Microsoft mismanaged it." they don't even manage it, like they just let it "stay" that way I think this is the problem with Trillion dollar company, they don't want focus on "small money" problem and they can just buy tech/company if they find it important enough in the future

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#130

Post by kleiba »

Teams is a heavyweight behemoth with awful UX while Skype orginally had a very lightweight feel to it. Of course, Microsoft had to kill that through various UI "improvements".

Also, Skype has an official Linux client.

Instead of developing Teams (NIH at its best), they could have carefully developed Skype into a similar platform. But I'm not sure a giant like Microsoft is capable of something like this. But at least their 8.5bn investment wouldn't have been just to kill a competitor.

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