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Microsoft is killing Skype

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Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#141

Post by crummy »

l33tman wrote: post #124
OvbiousError wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This frustrates me too. Discord stores your messages forever for free! They're slowly eating Slack's lunch when it comes to internet communities... but I guess Slack doesn't really care; those communities were never going to pay any real money anyway.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#142

Post by spwa4 »

tonyhart7 wrote: post #120
out_of_protocol wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was the funny story - Nokia got it's latest CEO (Stephen Elop) from M$, successfully almost-destroyed company, got it acquired by M$ and hopped back to M$. So, probably, it was the plan all along

why do you think this is happen in the first place??? the Board and Shareholder knew that it was sinking ships so it want cashout to Microsoft at least before its going to rubble

Exactly. There's a business reason hardware companies like Nokia got killed (because it wasn't just Nokia. Lots of telco hardware companies were making handsets before and aren't anymore). That seems to me to be that Nokia didn't know how to make $100/user/year by controlling the software like MS and Google do (MS with "enterprise" sales and ads, Google with ads)

Also makes the choice for Microsoft, as opposed to anyone else, very understandable. The other choice that "worked" for cell phone companies was to be a Chinese company, with state subsidies amounting to zero, maybe even negative tax, no environmental regulations at all (my favorite whoopsie was an algae bloom that started inside China and reached 1/4th to 1/3rd the way from China to the US. It is terrifying to think about just how many fish, animals and plants must have suffocated when that happened), plus definitely using WAY cheaper labor, maybe even using slave labor.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#143

Post by el_snark »

l33tman wrote: post #124
OvbiousError wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You may like to look at a self-hosted mattermost then.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#144

Post by SXX »

jim180 wrote: post #58
AnonC wrote: post #7

Tangential: I have a U.S. Skype Number (i.e., a real phone number offered by the Skype service) that's mainly used to receive and make (occasional) calls from/to a bank and to receive SMS occasionally. The cost is about $40 a year. With Skype Number not available for purchase since December and the Skype platform (including Skype Number) going away soon, what are some simple, good (and preferably cheaper) alternative…

I use tello.com. You can get eSIM and activate it while you are outside the U.S. If you won't activate roaming, sms and calling will use wifi calling.

Tello costs at least $5 / month though. Skype was jusy pay as you go.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#145

Post by high_na_euv »

crummy wrote: post #141
l33tman wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This frustrates me too. Discord stores your messages forever for free! They're slowly eating Slack's lunch when it comes to internet communities... but I guess Slack doesn't really care; those communities were never going to pay any real money anyway.

Slowly? Discord is #1 in gaming and probably dev too

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#146

Post by harvey9 »

kaon_ wrote: post #131
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…

This. In German the word for "video-calling" is "Skyping". Similar to MSN, the strength of the brand and goodwill that it has in some geographies is on-par with Google for search, or Coca Cola for coke. The fact that the software got consistently worse, year on year on year is hard to grasp for me. Microsoft made the right call to cannibalize and use teams. But how was Skype such a pain? Not being able to share scree…

Coke is a trademark owned by Coca-Cola - the generic word is cola. Their brand is so strong that even though you were thinking about the topic of branding they still got you!

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#147

Post by chneu »

freetime2 wrote: post #39
AnonC wrote: post #7

Tangential: I have a U.S. Skype Number (i.e., a real phone number offered by the Skype service) that's mainly used to receive and make (occasional) calls from/to a bank and to receive SMS occasionally. The cost is about $40 a year. With Skype Number not available for purchase since December and the Skype platform (including Skype Number) going away soon, what are some simple, good (and preferably cheaper) alternative…

I was using Google Voice for a while, which is nice because it is free and never had any issues receiving SMS. A US phone number is required to activate, so I used a US relative's phone number to activate and then just disabled all the forwarding features so calls and SMS would never be forwarded to that number. Unfortunately, I went so long without actually using it that they took my number away (my fault because th…

I've been using Gvoice pretty much since it started. I'm just as surprised as you that Google hasnt killed it. The writing has seemed to be on the wall a few times but it's still around, thankfully.

When they semi-killed hangouts a couple years ago I thought for sure Gvoice was gone.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#148

Post by high_na_euv »

kleiba wrote: post #130

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…

>NIH at its best

How do you know?

Teams feel totally different from Skype, from design perspective

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#149

Post by fh973 »

kaon_ wrote: post #131
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…

This. In German the word for "video-calling" is "Skyping". Similar to MSN, the strength of the brand and goodwill that it has in some geographies is on-par with Google for search, or Coca Cola for coke. The fact that the software got consistently worse, year on year on year is hard to grasp for me. Microsoft made the right call to cannibalize and use teams. But how was Skype such a pain? Not being able to share scree…

In Germany, MS was very successful though to get organizations on Teams during the pandemic. Zoom is not a thing.

Sure, it's nice to brand the verb, but when the product behind it is EOL, why bother.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#150

Post by decimalenough »

dcminter wrote: post #110
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…

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?

Lync was completely unrelated software with a different tech stack that was just branded as Skype.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype_for_Business

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