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Microsoft is killing Skype

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Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#71

Post by tonyhart7 »

john_the_writer wrote: post #37
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.

Yep.. in almost every way it should have beat out slack. It did everything better, and had a name. It was so very close, but lost. Mostly I think because of how hard it was to get non-users into it's eco system.

wdym non user?? it integrate nicely with windows eg:for sometimes skype installed by default on windows

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#73

Post by caseyy »

wsc981 wrote: post #45
caseyy wrote: post #38

When Microsoft acquired Skype (the company), it was clear they would kill it. Skype had previously been bought by eBay, for which it served the purpose of entering a new market. Then, it was bought by some investment funds, for which it served the purpose of making money. However, to Microsoft, which already had its Windows/Live messenger (which copied Skype’s homework anyway), Skype served no purpose except to remov…

I am not even sure if Microsoft was interested in the technology. I believe Skype originally functioned using some kind of p2p network. I believe Microsoft replaced this way of working shortly after acquiring Skype. Perhaps on behalf of security agencies.

Perhaps. I would more readily believe that if Microsoft didn't have an established pattern of killing competitor companies and tech.

I think they really tried to merge Skype with Live Messenger, stripping Skype for parts. And maybe those parts weren't the tech as much as the brand, but we don't know how much tech they adopted.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#74

Post by mrweasel »

wsc981 wrote: post #45
caseyy wrote: post #38

When Microsoft acquired Skype (the company), it was clear they would kill it. Skype had previously been bought by eBay, for which it served the purpose of entering a new market. Then, it was bought by some investment funds, for which it served the purpose of making money. However, to Microsoft, which already had its Windows/Live messenger (which copied Skype’s homework anyway), Skype served no purpose except to remov…

I am not even sure if Microsoft was interested in the technology. I believe Skype originally functioned using some kind of p2p network. I believe Microsoft replaced this way of working shortly after acquiring Skype. Perhaps on behalf of security agencies.

I seem to recall that Skype had the concept of "super nodes" which could facilitate NAT traversal for of users which didn't have a direct internet connection. Microsoft got rid of that pretty fast and replaced it with Microsoft managed servers (which to be fair seems less sketchy that using random users machines as something akin to a STUN server).

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#75

Post by Agraillo »

caseyy wrote: post #38

When Microsoft acquired Skype (the company), it was clear they would kill it. Skype had previously been bought by eBay, for which it served the purpose of entering a new market. Then, it was bought by some investment funds, for which it served the purpose of making money. However, to Microsoft, which already had its Windows/Live messenger (which copied Skype’s homework anyway), Skype served no purpose except to remov…

We take the modern internet speeds for granted, at that time the tech behind Skype was top notch and probably when Skype made its way into Windows, that looked like the original destination. But later many questionable decisions made things worse even before the internet became faster and other voice technologies were up to the task. One of them was changing the protocol that made many headsets bricked. Probably from the marketing point of view it was a "if one wants Skype, he or she would buy Windows" step, but obviously it was not

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#76

Post by pm3003 »

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?

SIP providers, such as Ippi.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#77

Post by mschuster91 »

caseyy wrote: post #52
klohto wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> actively harmed by US tech giants Both Nokia and Skype went under due to usual European leadership stagnation and comfort before getting bought. Thankfully both sales funneled enough funds into EU to bootstrap a startup culture here.

I've worked for a European company acquired by big tech in the US. My experience was that the Americans were quite full of themselves and didn't want to learn how we operated. There was a vibe of “things are going to change around here, no more free rides, the grown-ups have arrived.” Awful management decisions were made, most of the talent left, and the team from the original company now only exists on paper. n=1 an…

> I've worked for a European company acquired by big tech in the US. My experience was that the Americans were quite full of themselves and didn't want to learn how we operated.

Yup, that's also my experience. Americans are just like the unofficial President - they don't take "no" for an answer when they demand something, no matter what, unless you manage to get court judgements because that actually threatens the bottom line.

> Still, I wouldn't blame Europe so quickly. American big tech often fails to do business here within the local culture and laws, too.

I always remember when Wal-Mart tried to come to Germany... and had to leave with its tail tucked in because they just couldn't cope with stuff being done differently here [1].

[1] https://medium.com/the-global-millennial/why-walmart-failed-...

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#78

Post by kennysoona »

mschuster91 wrote: post #77
caseyy wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked for a European company acquired by big tech in the US. My experience was that the Americans were quite full of themselves and didn't want to learn how we operated. There was a vibe of “things are going to change around here, no more free rides, the grown-ups have arrived.” Awful management decisions were made, most of the talent left, and the team from the original company now only exists on paper. n=1 an…

> I've worked for a European company acquired by big tech in the US. My experience was that the Americans were quite full of themselves and didn't want to learn how we operated. Yup, that's also my experience. Americans are just like the unofficial President - they don't take "no" for an answer when they demand something, no matter what, unless you manage to get court judgements because that actually threatens the bo…

> Americans are just like the unofficial President -

̶Y̶o̶u̶ ̶m̶e̶a̶n̶ ̶T̶r̶u̶m̶p̶?̶ ̶H̶e̶'̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶d̶i̶s̶a̶s̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶v̶o̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶h̶i̶m̶ ̶s̶h̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶a̶s̶h̶a̶m̶e̶d̶,̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶h̶e̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶u̶n̶f̶o̶r̶t̶u̶n̶a̶t̶e̶l̶y̶ ̶v̶e̶r̶y̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶i̶c̶i̶a̶l̶.̶

Edit: Parent more than likely meant Musk as replies to this comment explained, I should have figured that out but it's too late or early or some other excuse.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#79

Post by xnorswap »

caseyy wrote: post #52
klohto wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> actively harmed by US tech giants Both Nokia and Skype went under due to usual European leadership stagnation and comfort before getting bought. Thankfully both sales funneled enough funds into EU to bootstrap a startup culture here.

I've worked for a European company acquired by big tech in the US. My experience was that the Americans were quite full of themselves and didn't want to learn how we operated. There was a vibe of “things are going to change around here, no more free rides, the grown-ups have arrived.” Awful management decisions were made, most of the talent left, and the team from the original company now only exists on paper. n=1 an…

I too have worked for a European company bought out by a large American company.

They too didn't understand our culture. They completely ignored the parts of our business that were scalable and taking off, and focused instead on nebulous "synergies". They actually seemed more interested in us taking on their branding than what we actually did. They'd push down demands to chase some latest trends but when we needed something back from them they struggled to give us the time of day.

They also immediately tried to give pay cuts and force immediate redundancies and seemed shocked to discover they couldn't legally do that. So instead they had to polite request that people in our company take a pay cut. I only know of one person naive enough to take them up on that offer.

I left a few years post acquisition, it was clear things would not get better we were just left rudderless because we'd previously been run by the founder for ~25 years and now were run by no-one with no direction.

Re: Microsoft is killing Skype

#80

Post by skrebbel »

tonyhart7 wrote: post #69
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…

"microsoft killed nokia" nokia did that to themselves, microsoft aquisition just prolonged its inevitable ends

Sure, though if you strangle a junkie about to OD, you still strangled them.
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