• @[email protected]
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    792 months ago

    Another company Microsoft bought and ran into the ground. It’s really incredible that they managed to get their lunch stolen. They had basically a monopoly and gave it away without a fight. Hell, the colloquialism for video calling someone was to Skype them for a looong time.

    And then one small competitor comes along and it’s all gone. How can you fuck up this bad? Especially during the pandemic, in which they should have further entrenched their monopoly…

    • @[email protected]
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      342 months ago

      Was Skype really relevant when the pandemic hit? Nobody I knew used it anymore. And teams had mostly taken over for Skype for business by then as well.

      • @[email protected]
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        32 months ago

        Skype for business is Skype in name only. It’s basically Office communicator with several name changes

      • PhobosAnomaly
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        2 months ago

        My org used Skype For Business and it worked remarkably well. Much more lightweight, though somehow still a little less responsive than it should have been.

        It has that “it just works” factor for video calling, whereas Teams almost needs a fucking checklist to rattle through if someone’s audio or video feed isn’t working.

          • PhobosAnomaly
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            32 months ago

            Yeah I’ve still got my headsets from boxes with Skype For Business branding that have “Compatible with Microsoft Lync” stickers on them.

            It’s probably closer in UI to Skype from the 2000s that the “real” Skype never really recaptured. Not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing.

    • @[email protected]
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      42 months ago

      They intentionally killed it, when it wasn’t theirs, it was a nuisance, when it was theirs, it wasn’t a nuisance, but also not too useful.

      It’s about control, I think.

      I mean, without Skype going bad would all these <censored> IMs, especially Telegram, become so popular?

        • @[email protected]
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          12 months ago

          Yes, which makes me wonder on the old question if it’s possible to create a distributed IM as prolific as bittorrent protocol.

          In that last example they did something right. At some point I liked ed2k+kad and would swear at bittorrent for not incorporating search, reputation and such as basic components, but maybe that’s what made torrents survive when other filesharing tools went out of common knowledge.

          I’m going to think on this.

    • @[email protected]
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      102 months ago

      Around these parts in the 2000s, MSN Messenger was what literally everyone used. Then Microsoft bought Skype and decided to shut down MSN Messenger. Then they also ruined Skype. Microsoft just can’t do anything right despite making so much money. It’s like they have no long term vision.