Comment on Skype was shut down for good today
TransplantedSconie@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Still find it absolutely wild that Microsoft fucked up during the global pandemic and allowed Zoom to slide right into the communications spot Skype should have been.
Fucking idiots.
Microsoft has 1 massive disadvantage when it tries to enter new markets.
It has to deal with brutal cutthroat competition from its worst enemy: Microsoft.
Ms internal politics destroy almost all its successes, their politics are why theyve never really been a threat, for every skype there’s a teams which cuts them off at the knees lest it cost a division head their chance at a promotion.
I personally blame stack ranking, invented by Jack Welch to justify cutting 20% of the company.
If you want to get mad, the Behind the Bastards episode on him explains why corporate America is what it is today.
I heard about that, some call it the “wasted decade” at MS. Top engineers refused to work together due to the stack ranking, not wanting draw the short end in the evaluations, when compared to each other.
A company I worked at 10 years ago also dabbled with it a bit, luckily not seriously. It was a consultancy form who hired top graduates from prestige universities, so it made even less sense. Dude, nobody is agerage or below here, you hire the best people after grilling them in interviews and a whole day assessment center. The bell curve just doesn’t make sense
My company does it and it’s fucking stressful. And just like you said, it doesn’t make a ton of sense.
Occasionally there are certainly people who are just there to ride coat tails but I see this behavior more in leadership than in the front lines.
IMHO, the pandemic just allowed everyone to see how much better of an experience Zoom had over Skype.
I worked in an office where half of corporate used Skype, and the cooler sub-brands used Zoom. No one in the main corporate office was happy about using Skype. Microsoft had been neglecting it for quite some time.
Microsoft had been neglecting it for quite some time.
You’re right but that’s why they’re idiots 😄
Yeah, right before the pandemic it was becoming clear that Skype was in Keep The Lights On mode, and MS wanted to funnel all of those users into Teams. But Teams also sucked.
It’s a lot better than it used to be, but it still takes MS an ungodly amount of time to build basic features that have been in Slack / Zoom for a decade… and MS is one of the biggest companies in the world.
how much better of an experience Zoom had over Skype.
I hate Zoom
Did they really? Microsoft championed Teams and its pretty accepted in corporate environments today, especially if they are already on Microsoft.
Afaik, Skype for Business was merged into Teams. Skype for non-business consumers has been virtually dead for longer. The way I see it, Microsoft let go of the brand, the value of which is questionable in this decade. When they bought it, I remember the rumors saying it was because of its voice codec.
Nobody uses Teams voluntarily. It’s always imposed by corporate.
Skype was the term for skyping. It’s like buying a social media that coined the term tweet and changing it’s name to a letter. Stupidest shit ever.
MS Teams did become the standard in a lot of places now
I have to use Teams for work and it is absolute dog shit.
Why? My experience is the opposite.
Try searching for something that was said in a chat last month.
Then follow what was said in reply.
Now as an admin, try to delete an image someone has shared with the team.
But my biggest pet peeve, which annoys me literally every day, is how it shows a notification for a new message in your task bar.
You click on it, Teams opens how you left it, and you read the message.
But the notification stays. To get rid of it, you have to click on a different chat, then back on the one where the message was posted.
I never said it wasn’t dogshit, but Microsoft did win the corporate messenger race
I couldn’t get my head round this at all. Everyone used Skype where I worked, and it seemed hugely popular. By the time COVID happened, I was in another job, and all of a sudden everyone was going mad about this Zoom program. I’d never heard of it, but it just came out of nowhere and everyone on the planet was using it. How on earth Skype fumbled it so hard is absolutely staggering.
Skype didn’t fumble it, Microsoft just doesn’t know how to strategy. When they bought Skype, they killed MSN and told people to move to Skype, whereas they should’ve integrated the two to make the transition seamless. Then they had both Teams and Skype for Business at the same time by the time COVID happened.
They messed up on every turn.
pdxfed@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Hey, RIM/Blackberry’s CEO went to mobile world Congress in 2010, 3 solid YEARS after the iPhone launched, was dominating and defining the smartphone world and said, “we feel touchscreen is not the future of mobile phones” and rolled out another hybrid touch/keyboard model like the 5 they already had
Blackberry was $150/share as of 2009 with the entire world in front of it. It’s now worth $3.59/share.
umbrella@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
to be fair i miss physical keyboards on phones. i wish we gave the space for it.
nl4real@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Same. Colossal pain in the ass.
kambusha@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Get yourself a RIMjob and help bring them back
al_Kaholic@lemmynsfw.com 3 weeks ago
You could get a Bluetooth keyboard. Literally pick your size.
iopq@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
You have to charge it separately, it’s not quite as convenient
Soggy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I’d happily have a phone half an inch thicker if it meant a folding or sliding physical keyboard for my large hands.
prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Netflix tried to get distribution in Blockbuster and a partnership w/them and were told to fuck off …
Samskara@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Blackberry and Nokia were so slow to react to the iPhone, it was painful to watch.
pdxfed@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
And then, to bring us full circle to OP, Microsoft made it’s strategic acquisition of Nokia 😂 theverge.com/…/microsoft-nokia-acquisition-costs
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Their stuff was better, but disadvantaged by public perception. A perfect storm one can say.
Samskara@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Their stuff was significantly worse in user experience. Buttery smooth scrolling and highly reactive multi touch on a touch screen only device was revolutionary. Touch screens back then were known to be shitty to use. The competition to the iPhone were phones with tons of buttons, styluses and cumbersome user interfaces.
All previous players in the smartphone market Blackberry, Nokia, Palm, Windows mobile were slow to adapt and failed.
Palm’s webOS was competitive to iOS and in many ways superior. It failed because of mediocre hardware, bad carrier deals, and running out of money too quickly.
Google‘s Android succeeded despite sucking until about version 4 by willpower and deep pockets from Google.
The original introduction keynote for the iPhone was mindblowing back then.
iopq@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Intel thought the iPhone market was going to be too small so they didn’t agree to manufacture their CPUs
pdxfed@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
While also completely missing the boat on the potential of graphics cards and watching Nvidia and even AMD become massively more relevant in recent years.
Cocopanda@futurology.today 3 weeks ago
They’re a cyber security firm now. Wild stuff.
AtariDump@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
us.macmillan.com/books/…/losingthesignal/
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I think he felt right, but at the same time Blackberry wasn’t properly marketed.
And maybe having a touchscreen option would be good enough.