Good ol capitalism breeding innovation. And then acquiring the innovation, cloning it poorly and killing it off so the market has no access to the product and service they wanted. Innovative!
Exclusive: Microsoft is finally shutting down Skype in May
Submitted 2 months ago by baatliwala@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.xda-developers.com/microsoft-killing-skype/
Comments
solomon42069@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Stalinwolf@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Immigration Canada: “Prove to us that your marriage is genuine. Prove that it wasn’t for immigration purposes.”
My wife and I: “You sure you want that?”
Immigration Canada: “Make with the proof.”
My wife and I: 400 pages, front and back, of Skype call logs/timestamps. A fucking literal ream of paper
SplashJackson@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
I think they just wanted you to perform a verification fuck
I would
EngineerGaming@feddit.nl 2 months ago
Me who dreads having to give her husband sex when she becomes a wife and hopes he’d pity her enough to not do it to her when she’s clearly miserable and hates every second of it:
BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
I would
What, like droit du seigneur? In Denmark it caused a lot of debacle, when people receiving Danish citizenship, had to shake hands with the local mayor during the ceremony. But I do reckon that having to fuck the mayor to get citizenship, would be too much for even the most right wing … nuts
neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
I don’t want to say the country, but when I went with my wife for me to get residency via marriage, this is how it went.
Immigration Officer: Do you have any questions? Me: No Immigration Officer: Sign here and come back in a month with your passport to implement the visa Me: Uhh… That’s it? OK Bye.
Viri4thus@feddit.org 2 months ago
Ah yes, typical MS handling acquisitions. What a cancer of a company, metastasising everywhere and as much as you want to get better, it just won’t dissappear. Antitrust oversight is a joke…
Mad_Punda@feddit.org 2 months ago
I’ve been using Skype for cheaper international calls to family that still relies on phones instead of video calls etc. I’ll need to check what happens with my credit. Any recommendations for an alternative?
Dettweiler42@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
I’m not a fan of Meta, but all of my international family rely heavily on WhatsApp.
It also seems that Signal supports VoIP calling, but I have not tried it.
Mad_Punda@feddit.org 2 months ago
Well, I have family that is old enough not to manage to use WhatsApp. They have a smartphone. WhatsApp is set up. I can never reach them on it.
dan@upvote.au 2 months ago
Google Voice is good. I use it to call from the USA to Australia which is only $0.01/minute.
Zoomboingding@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It’s a little contentious, but Discord is a solid video chat app. It’s good for hop in/hop out for multiple users and you can have a dedicated family chat room on the server too.
ECB@feddit.org 2 months ago
I only have to use this occasionally, but on my android I use the app “Talkatone” to make free calls to phones. They have paid plans to keep your number, but I tend to just use new ones whenever one expires.
It might not suit your needs, but it’s worked pretty reliably for me for the past 10 years or so.
kipo@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Wire has calling voice and video calling.
ambitiousslab@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
reddig33@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Dumbasses.
Brkdncr@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Teams has a lot of Skype references under the hood…
kautau@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Well yeah “shutting down” here is more like “absorbed” into teams. They don’t make “enough” money from consumers to keep it going, but they do from their teams subscriptions. The tech is and will further be ported to teams and the branding changed.
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Wait…MICROSOFT owns skype??? Was this always the case, or did they do something stupid where they bought skype during the heyday, and immediately tank it just a few years before the pandemic? Because Zoom really had a field day in 2020.
So, which is it? Did they always own it, or were they a buyer of an established skype that tanked it like Verizon did with tumblr? Or that other company did with myspace?
jodanlime@midwest.social 2 months ago
If I remember correctly MS bought it from eBay. And then promptly did their best job at taking a dump on it. Nothing MS did to Skype was good, disabled encryption by default, removed features, made the network so terrible that they actually make you consider teams. At one point Skype was the only game in town for personal web calls and chats, in the US at least. MS pissed that away, because killing competition and owning patents is more lucrative than creating good products and services.
jonne@infosec.pub 2 months ago
Also forced people to use a Microsoft account to use it, and they definitely messed something up in the migration.
empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
The biggest thing they did to kill it was banner ads in the client. The second those showed up, all my friends and myself instantly jumped to the new, fledgling Discord.
beerclue@lemmy.world 2 months ago
They’ve owned it since 2011. When they did buy it, they had Lync, which sucked pretty bad. Now they have Teams, probably the result of merging Lync and Skype.
cm0002@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Now they have Teams, probably the result of merging Lync and Skype.
And the resulting horror show is just as bad as you’d imagine to :/
Valthorn@feddit.nu 2 months ago
It’s the second one.
gramie@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
I remember a theory that the US government asked Microsoft to purchase Skype and change it from p2p to server-based, so that they could intercept decrypted communications.
Skype was originally made by a European company (Latvian?).
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Ya know, as far as conspiracy theories go, this isn’t hard to believe might be true. I could see that. I mean, I don’t know either way what the truth is, but it’s not like you’re saying the moonlanding was actually first done by bigfoot, and it’s kept under wraps to promote the cold war. See the difference is, I actually DO know about the bigfoot one. That’s real. That happened. The government lies about bigfoot on the moon!
gusvgus@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
Buyer. 🤡
noughtnaut@lemmy.world 2 months ago
My father, who worked for a huge computer manufacturer, was one approached by two young dudes asking for a server for their new startup. He listened to their proposition but couldn’t see how they were going to stay in business, so he turned them down and they went elsewhere for their hardware.
This was the two founders of Skype, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, some 20 years ago.
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Your dad after hearing Skype will shut down: “FINALLY!!! This nightmare can finally end.”
missandry351@lemmings.world 2 months ago
Maybe bring back windows live messenger
fubarx@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
Remember to break this news gently to your elderly parents.
ramenshaman@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Skype is what I usually use to video chat with them but I recently got my mom to download Signal, which is nice
dan@upvote.au 2 months ago
I’m still sad they got rid of MSN Messenger in favour of Skype. MSN had superior video and audio quality.
I had so many international friends on MSN Messenger that I have no idea how to contact any more.
plumbercraic@lemmy.sdf.org 2 months ago
Tiger@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Well that sucks, I use it a lot but I will not use Teams.
baatliwala@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Amazing how Skype went from a verb to the shadow realm
jodanlime@midwest.social 2 months ago
Word on the street is that MS couldn’t harvest the data they wanted out of Skype, even after turning off the encryption. So they let the Skype team keep on going because of reasons, while silently replacing them with teams.
frunch@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Would seem almost intentional given the size and success of the company. How do you fuck something like that up so badly? Seems like one of those Embrace, Extend, Extinguish deals or similar
IsThisAnAI@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Skype was always shit. It was being first to market that made it popular. It was one of the first ways to get cheaper and free informational calling. By the time MS purchased it vent and ts became popular as well as zoom and others entering the space.