Microsoft Shuts Down Skype
- Reference: 0177334299
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/25/05/05/1938237/microsoft-shuts-down-skype
- Source link:
The once-dominant video calling platform was purchased by Microsoft for [2]$8.5 billion in 2011 , replacing the company's Windows Live Messenger. Created in 2003 by developers behind Kazaa file-sharing software, Skype became synonymous with video calling during broadband internet's expansion. Skype's decline accelerated after Microsoft's acquisition, with unpopular redesigns and competition from Zoom, which captured market share during the COVID-19 pandemic. Microsoft began phasing out Skype in 2017, starting with Skype for Business, while bundling Teams with Office applications until regulatory intervention forced their separation.
[1] https://slashdot.org/story/25/02/28/1426223/microsoft-to-shut-down-skype-in-may-shift-users-to-teams
[2] https://news.slashdot.org/story/11/10/14/1157230/microsoft-finalizes-skype-acquisition
All that's left (Score:4, Funny)
All we have now is Teams, New Teams, Teams (New) , Teams Home, Teams for Business, New Teams for Business, New Home Teams for Home and Business (New), and New Teams (Home Business Edition).
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Skype for Teams
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That hasn't got much Teams in it.
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You forgot the Classic versions of all of those.
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What about Teams for Workgroups 3.11 (New Technology)?
Well, it was very confusing. (Score:4, Funny)
Well, it was so very confusing having to decide between "Skype" and "Teams." Now I just have to decide between "Microsoft Teams (for work)," "Microsoft Teams (Personal)," "Microsoft Teams (new)," "Microsoft Teams (old version)," "Microsoft Teams (for work and school)," and the soon to be popular "Microsoft Teams (Go fuck yourself.)"
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> Well, it was so very confusing having to decide between "Skype" and "Teams." Now I just have to decide between "Microsoft Teams (for work)," "Microsoft Teams (Personal)," "Microsoft Teams (new)," "Microsoft Teams (old version)," "Microsoft Teams (for work and school)," and the soon to be popular "Microsoft Teams (Go fuck yourself.)"
You forgot, Microsoft Teams (Go fuck yourself) (New Version).
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MS is really good at adding suck to their products as a feature. Let's keep polishing the turd with a new UI, make it harder to use, keep is as a minimal viable product, and rebrand it. Maybe Microsoft can fix some of the legacy problems; i dont know, maybe start with search within windows not working? They should do what grepwin does.
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Micro$hit is the company that never even figured out how to give a proper error message. Inevitably, you get some nonsense like the ubiquitous error 0x800700c1. Go search for it, even clicking on the help link if it's offered, and you get nothing but stupid responses like "reboot your PC," "reinstall {everything}," "run sfc /scannow"... They actually redefine the term "enshittify" by becoming a reverse King Midas: Everything they touch inevitably goes to shit.
Re: Well, it was very confusing. (Score:1)
I love it when people who never touch this stuff start shooting their mouths off it makes it simple to find the real blowhards to ignore later
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> "Microsoft Teams (Go fuck yourself.)
You repeat yourself.
Wasn't it just a WebRTC client? (Score:2)
What was the valuable thing about it besides the people that were using it? Wasn't it just built on open protocols that anyone of us could just simply build a clone of quickly?
What's stopping somebody from building the next Skype and actually doing it right?
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Relatively cheap international calls and even calls to other cities of your own country.
How about Open Source it (Score:2)
Make it open source so we can make our own servers.
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For all 1000 people in the world? Should I tell you how popular IRC or Jabber are? Hint: hardly anyone uses them.
And then are you willing to host all the user data? Because Skype had its chat history stored on Microsoft servers.
Finally, the mobile client sucks. Very slow and buggy. Are you willing to rewrite it?
Sorry, never going to happen. That ship has sailed.
Left hand doesnâ(TM)t know what the right han (Score:1)
I just got an email 2 days ago that my Skype credit ($3.21) would expire in 10 days. I have got these regularly over the years when I hadnâ(TM)t used Skype for a while. Used to save quite a few dollars on calls home from overseas back in the day. Câ(TM)est la vie, say the old folks ðYZ
Somebody blew it (Score:2)
This technology was pretty fucking impressive in 2002. I feel like in some alternate reality, people stop giving phone numbers and give each other skype addresses and that's what we 'd still all be doing. Way back in the day when I traveled a lot internationally for business, I had a phone line that forwarded to my skype account, and then I'd have my skype forward to my international phone # for like 2 cents a minute. Cool stuff.
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That's probably the main reason for its downfall. With other messaging apps that use your phone number as an ID, you don't have to share anything. All your contacts are already there.
With Skype you have to share IDs that can be misspelled/misunderstood or lost as you need some app or an actual piece of paper to write them down. With a phone number you just add it to your contact list. Boom, done.
Government (Score:2)
Skype was never bought by microsoft. They allowed routing of calls that didnt accept wiretapping and when the government complained that it wanted to wiretap it, the second they didnt agree to comply POOF microsoft bought them and IMMEDIATELY removed the decentralized call routing.
So get it right. The government bought skype and handed it to microsoft so they could toe that line.
No different than the CCP buying a company.
Re: Government (Score:1)
In case anybody considers believing this drivel, please note the commenter is a clueless blowhard
Extinguished (Score:3)
Mission accomplished.
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Yes - the original Skype was Peer-to-peer encrypted. Not popular with the TLA-agencies.
First try was eBay (WTF), but they forgot to buy the source and could not break it.
Second try, Micro$oft , and they managed to get their servers in the middle (Peer-M$-Peer) for their friends in Virginia. Now it apparently has no value to keep around and people use Signal or whatever...