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Microsoft is killing Skype

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Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#571
post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of it was that performance was abysmal. Everyone jumped to Discord (an electron app!) when it released, because it performed better.

From the circles I was in, everyone jumped from Skype / Mumble / Teamspeak because of D/DoS attacks after having their ip exposed. It happened all the time because booters were so popular and widely available, costing about $5/mo via paypal. People were willing to put up with more delay (over p2p) to prevent having to trust each person that joins the TS. Skype transitioned away from p2p because mobile phones were not…

Mumble was never P2P.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#572
post #510

Skype (the original product/service, before Microsoft's corporate hug of death) was an amazing piece of technology. It was pre-cloud in every aspect, not only using P2P for actual VoIP traffic but also for contact list management and node discovery (via DHT and promoting random people's PCs to act as core nodes! Opening up Wireshark on my laptop when on fast university Wi-Fi with a public, unfirewalled IP was quite t…

> before Microsoft's corporate hug of death Abuse of the law to buy a competitor, form a monopoly, and then price fix an entire market. It sounds cute when you say "hug of death" almost like they didn't intentionally seek out this precise outcome. > It was also available literally everywhere Funny how that was literally the first thing to get the axe. I guess some "hugs" are like that, huh? > Rest in peace! Justice f…

Monopoly? My god man get a grip.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#573
post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but m$ doesn't have a monopoly on video/instant chat? teams is so objectively bad that anyone who was using skype will move on to a different company's product

In a personal setting? You may be right. In a corporate setting? "We already have Microsoft accounts for all of our users, do you want us to maintain a separate user list? No way. Teams may be bad, but it's not bad enough to warrant that."

Some corporates, yes. Many others, no. A true sign there's no monopoly here, just regular old vendor lock in.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#574
post #102
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…

Try voip.ms. Incoming texts can be sent to you as an email. A US number costs about $1.50 a month.

I use Groundwire as the client for voice and SMS.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#575
post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but m$ doesn't have a monopoly on video/instant chat? teams is so objectively bad that anyone who was using skype will move on to a different company's product

I wish that were true. Every enterprise I've seen has thrown their hands up and said "we already use microsoft for everything else (generally email, ad, or office) and teams is bundled why would we use anything else". So instead of getting good chat and VoIP apps, the decision makers just stick with the cheapest option (Teams, they're already paying for it in one of their tens of other Microsoft subscriptions)

Didn’t MSFT recently uncouple teams license from O365? I think you now need a separate license to use business teams, but also why use anything else.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#577
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…

On a related note, a bit over a decade ago I had installed logmein on my parents' computer to be able to easily help them with any IT issues. But they since pivoted away from personal accounts and I never found anything else as straightforward. I feel that in a lot of ways tech has regressed. EDIT: I just found that logmein actually offer a personal product again, named GoToMyPC, but what used to be entirely free at…

It hasn’t regressed really, it’s just no longer free. Microsoft quick assist exist and allows you to connect to any pc with the users client code.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#578
post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> before Microsoft's corporate hug of death Abuse of the law to buy a competitor, form a monopoly, and then price fix an entire market. It sounds cute when you say "hug of death" almost like they didn't intentionally seek out this precise outcome. > It was also available literally everywhere Funny how that was literally the first thing to get the axe. I guess some "hugs" are like that, huh? > Rest in peace! Justice f…

but m$ doesn't have a monopoly on video/instant chat? teams is so objectively bad that anyone who was using skype will move on to a different company's product

> teams is so objectively bad

What is better than Teams? I don't love Teams, but it's light years beyond what Zoom provides, and the services that Amazon and Google offer were pretty garbage last time I checked.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep seeing this comment in the thread, but I don’t really understand it. Sure, p2p is cool for us engineers. But why the end user ever cares about it? Microsoft’s purpose is to sell the product to as many customers as possible. If the decision was made to axe the architecture to increase the sales… it’s not the wrong decision? For us, tech snobs, we can always find an alternative anyways.

> Sure, p2p is cool for us engineers. But why the end user ever cares about it? Skype really was the killer communication app with the killer feature: voice and video over IP, for free. It offered paid calling (for a fairly reasonable if not particularly low price), even international. End users (other than gamers or enterprise) cared about privacy and decentralization. Not many end users, but perhaps many who made r…

All the things that came later killed Skype’s business. We might not like them, but clearly average person has made different choices.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#580
post #528
post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had interacted with Pritt Kasesalu (PrittK) when I was very young. In the late 90/early 00s I played an MMO developed by Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) named Subspace, released in the mid 90s. It was a top down astroids-like space game with maps of up to 100 or more players, even back then. The game shut down officially but the server leaked and became community ran. The original client was not very secure so hack…

I think you linked the wrong steam game, it's https://store.steampowered.com/app/352700/Subspace_Continuum... :)

Whoops, thank you, yes.
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