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Microsoft is killing Skype

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Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#511

Post by lxgr »

homebrewer wrote: post #479
Timpy wrote: post #240

Back in the Windows 7 days I installed Skype on my parents computer before moving abroad, their user experience was basically like receiving a phone call. Even though they weren't tech savvy we never had any issues. I would call them, and if they were home and near the computer, they could answer it and we'd be video chatting. A year or so ago I found this to be impossible, there was no application for desktop that w…

Telegram does that and also has a native (as in C++/Qt) desktop client, unlike almost every other messenger.

WhatsApp these days also has native clients for Windows and macOS (UWP and Catalyst, respectively). They don't yet have all the features of the Electron/web client, but are getting there, and at least on macOS, I much prefer the experience.

Also, I wouldn't exactly call Qt native, unless you happen to be on KDE.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#512

Post by Gualdrapo »

imho Skype wasn't the only huge opportunity Microsoft had to win space in the internet - and it wasn't only Messenger, but their social space they had along with it. In there you could post statuses (even with pictures!) and people could comment on those. Sound familiar...?

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#514

Post by pests »

DrFalkyn wrote: post #508
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…

Sadly this is the culture now at tech companies. All the data has to go through company servers, whether it makes technical sense or not Pretty sure I flunked a system design question this reason. I was asked to design an online chat system. I asked of they wanted support for groups, they said no. So I gave them simple two way socket solution. Apparently that wasn’t good enough, They wanted a full DB storing everyone…

Did they want multi device? How do you sync messages? History?

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#516

Post by nimish »

Lammy wrote: post #371
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…

> 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. Story in two headlines: - “NSA offering 'billions' for Skype eavesdrop solution” https://www.theregister.com/2009/02/12/nsa_offers_billions_f... (2009) - “Microsoft Buys Skype for $8.5 Billion. Why, Exactly?” https://www.wired.com/2011/05/microsoft…

Naw, having been there, Microsoft killed Skype because it had no idea how to manage a B2C product.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#517

Post by pests »

harvey9 wrote: post #146
kaon_ wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

In the US south if you ask for a coke they will ask which kind - Pepsi, sprite, or a Coke coke? Etc

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#519

Post by DrFalkyn »

robin_reala wrote: post #193
high_na_euv wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Missed? They grew Teams, lol. Zoom - wtf, who the hell uses it after. Discord would be better example since it is huge, even LLVM community uses it

A deaf colleague massively preferred Zoom to Teams because the video quality on Zoom allowed a lot more sign language nuance to transfer.

Zoom has live captioning at lest for the paid version

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#520

Post by snoman »

ljm wrote: post #214
hnlurker22 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what happens when you hire leet code engineers and they become managers. Look at Google now. This isn't some magical outcome of big corps. A big corp is practically the people who work there.

It’s not really about ‘leet code engineers’ getting into management but the perverse incentives involved in climbing up the corporate ladder. It’s as if it doesn’t matter what project you pitch and what the fallout is as long as some KPI somewhere gets a boost. Just get your promotion and ride off into the sunset, someone else will deal with the aftermath.

At Microsoft, for every Principal Engineer/Manager there’s a dead internal project that nobody uses but had “… lots of impact.”
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