Amazing how Skype went from a verb to the shadow realm. MS could've done so much more.
this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2025
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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.
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
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.
One of the things skype did first and best was decent noise filtering, transforming peoples shit audio equipment to something you could listen to for more than 5 minutes without going crazy.
For sure, Skype/eBay did a lot right at first. But by the time MS bought it, it was already falling from favor.
I miss vent, it was so clean
Mumble existed then, and still exists now. Vent was literally never clean, it was always bloated and behind.
(sorry, I'm very passionate about the Vent vs. Ts vs. Mumble debacle of the early aughts)
I agree with you here. They just never kept up with what people wanted or needed out of a communications platform. When Discord showed it was more versatile nearly 10 years ago, my whole group switched and never looked back.
Skype call sounds still bring specific kinds of nostalgia though.
They treated it as an extension of the telephone is how I always thought about it.
Good point, they never really got past that, huh
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
I think they just wanted you to perform a verification fuck
I would
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
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:
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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.
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!
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?
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.
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.
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Google Voice is good. I use it to call from the USA to Australia which is only $0.01/minute and doesn't have any monthly fees. You can see the rates here: https://voice.google.com/rates
I've got an Android phone and you can configure Google Voice so that it's automatically used whenever you make an international call from your phone's regular dialer.
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. Very device compatible and resource friendly, and totally free.
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.
Wire has calling voice and video calling.
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...
Maybe bring back windows live messenger
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.
Dumbasses.
Teams has a lot of Skype references under the hood…
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.
yep, i was always under the assumption they bought it for parts to use in teams.
Remember to break this news gently to your elderly parents.
Skype is what I usually use to video chat with them but I recently got my mom to download Signal, which is nice
Well that sucks, I use it a lot but I will not use Teams.
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