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Microsoft is killing Skype

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Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#461

Post by htrp »

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?

> Is the money pit so deep that they knock each other in while in-fighting for control on the edge of it?

Yes. rivalry is at it's finest (and fiercest) when you're fighting your peer divisions inside the same company.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#463

Post by issafram »

I remember loving Skype before Microsoft bought it. I started using it very early on. It was amazing. I remember they had something like public groups (I forget the name). Think of it like a Twitter Space. I was in there every day.

Some people might remember "his highness from India". Good times arguing and listen to others argue with him.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#464

Post by tombert »

paulddraper wrote: post #433
geocar wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one in my family but me has iPhones, so I think Facetime is out, So FaceTime lets you make a link that you can give to someone with a web browser and they can use it to reach you, and it works pretty well. You might just try it. > I suppose I'll have to talk my parents into installing Signal desktop, but I was kind of hoping for something that gave you the "user is online" status thing like Skype does. That's pr…

FaceTime requires the initiator have a Mac. Mac users can call others. Others cannot call Mac.

Yeah, and I don't have a Mac computer anymore, and neither do my parents or my grandmother.

I coordinated with my parents, we're gonna try the free Teams thing.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#465

Post by lern_too_spel »

smallerfish wrote: post #453
lern_too_spel wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mass surveillance was easier when anyone, including the NSA, could run a supernode. Microsoft had to run its own supernodes because usage changed from most people running Skype on desktops, which could be supernodes, to most people running Skype on phones, which can't. At that point, it hardly makes sense to push new supernode functionality for multiparty video calls and other optimizations to end users to handle a s…

> if all you need is a 1-1 call without NAT traversal. That part of your sentence is doing a lot of work. It has to be as easy as clicking on a contact for oldsters.

That's the point. That's why Skype had supernodes, and that's why Skype on mobiles meant that Microsoft needed to run its own supernodes. At that point, you might as well add features like multiparty video calls, and then it makes no sense to have your users install supernodes software.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#466

Post by bigstrat2003 »

tonyhart7 wrote: post #152
spwa4 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 any…

I think you just hating and out of touch with reality (if this is not satire) cause how much less substance this comment are the simple reason they die is because they sucks, that's just it. HN user just overthinking this simple reason the CONSUMER want user just want something that's good, that's why nokia and blackberry die not because they got killed by another big corpo, but because they can't adapt

Yeah I don't agree with the tone of this comment but the substance is correct. I didn't own a Nokia phone, so I can't speak to that. But Blackberry died because their phones just plain sucked. Even before the modern smartphone era they were unpleasant to use, but at least they were enabling something that nobody else did. But once the iPhone came along (and Android after that), they had competitors who were flat out better than them in every way.

And even that wouldn't have necessarily killed them, if they had adapted quickly to make this new kind of phone. But instead they made the Blackberry Storm as a "hey we can do this touchscreen thing too", but crippled it by giving it a resistive touchscreen which was incredibly unpleasant to use relative to the competition. And iirc they still insisted on tying it to BES, even though their competitors offered an email experience which Just Worked without having to use RIM's server. It seemed (from the outside to be fair) like RIM refused to recognize that the competition had blown them out of the water, so instead of pivoting to catch up they doggedly tried to offer "what we had before, but with grudging minimal concessions to the things our customers want". But that was never going to work, because customers had never liked their original model to begin with. They liked what it enabled for them, but once competitors could offer the same benefits with a more pleasant to use interface, it was over for that model.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#467

Post by x0x0 »

ryandrake wrote: post #366
randerson wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skype should be a textbook case of how a product team will keep inventing new projects to justify their continued employment, even if it means messing with a winning formula. Skype achieved perfection a year or two after the Microsoft acquisition. At that point they should have downsized the team and focused on maintenance. Instead, they kept releasing new versions, each new version being worse than the previous one.

Wasn't the whole point of O.G. Skype that it was entirely peer to peer, and did not require a central service? Then, once Microsoft bought it, the first thing they did was ditch that and make it require centralized servers? IMO peak Skype was right before it was bought. Agreed though, every time Microsoft touched it, they made it worse. But many (most?) software is like that now. I dread new releases, because everyon…

Right, but that architecture falls apart in a mobile-first world.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#468

Post by soundnote »

tshaddox wrote: post #452
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…

Didn't Microsoft Teams soundly defeat Zoom, Slack, and all the others? I was under the impression that Teams has at least an order of magnitude more active users than any competitor.

It does, but Teams is mostly a thing within businesses. Skype is a consumer side brand, which MS is scuttling in favour of Teams (which is a really weird brand to try to use for consumer-side customers). They could've used Teams architecture/app and branded it as Skype, it would've made way more sense than Teams (free) which is what they're doing now. Consumer side Microsoft Accounts and business are different worlds, it'd help MS a lot to speak about them clearly.

But MS and good product naming, well...

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#469

Post by johannes1234321 »

ryandrake wrote: post #366
randerson wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skype should be a textbook case of how a product team will keep inventing new projects to justify their continued employment, even if it means messing with a winning formula. Skype achieved perfection a year or two after the Microsoft acquisition. At that point they should have downsized the team and focused on maintenance. Instead, they kept releasing new versions, each new version being worse than the previous one.

Wasn't the whole point of O.G. Skype that it was entirely peer to peer, and did not require a central service? Then, once Microsoft bought it, the first thing they did was ditch that and make it require centralized servers? IMO peak Skype was right before it was bought. Agreed though, every time Microsoft touched it, they made it worse. But many (most?) software is like that now. I dread new releases, because everyon…

The p2p part was relevant for the operators as Skype didn't need to run (and pay) their own servers to deal with the load, but some other user close by provided it for free, giving low latency all over the world.

However with shift to mobile the patterns changed and less people ran it on desktops, thus less supernodes and the p2p approach had limitations (no group call) where solutions were needed.

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