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posted by Fnord666 on Monday May 14 2018, @07:21PM   Printer-friendly
from the because-Microsoft? dept.

Bloomberg writes about how Microsoft turned consumers against a once popular brand, Skype. Before its sale in 2011, Skype was quite popular despite many shortcomings. After its purchase, existing shortcomings have been amplified and new ones added.

In March tech investor and commentator Om Malik summarized the negativity by tweeting that Skype was "a turd of the highest quality" and directing his ire at its owner. "Way to ruin Skype and its experience. I was forced to use it today, but never again."

Microsoft Corp. says the criticism is overblown and reflects, in part, people's grumpiness with software updates. There are also other factors undermining users' affection for an internet tool that 15 years ago introduced the idea of making calls online, radically resetting the telecommunications landscape in the process.

The purchase price was $8.5 billion USD, which will be hard to recover from Skype itself, so other factors must be at play but are not mentioned.


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  • (Score: 2) by looorg on Monday May 14 2018, @08:05PM (5 children)

    by looorg (578) on Monday May 14 2018, @08:05PM (#679747)

    Isn't this capitalism 101? Buy competition and tank their products so people are left with your products? That is unless you can buy a competitor and rebrand their product as your product or something similar.

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  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Monday May 14 2018, @08:22PM (1 child)

    by frojack (1554) on Monday May 14 2018, @08:22PM (#679756) Journal

    Except the flaw in that ointment is Capitalism works around breakage, just like the the internet.

    Capitalism isn't the problem here. It may be the solution.

    Had Microsoft kept skype free, easy, reliable, and secure Microsoft would never have had any competition for Skype voice video and text messages.
    Even without the secure part they would have owned the space. But that was never why Microsoft wanted into skype. They never had a business plan for skype, other than the NSA was willing to foot the entire bill. So Microsoft threw the users under the bus, and serves only government now.

    As a result there are half a dozen things available, or coming out, that aren't within reach of the NSA, and do at least as good a job as Skype (because the bar was set so low).

    Signal, Telegram, Tox, Silence, Threema, Conversations, there are lots of these. They all suffer from interoperability, but then so does skype, facechat hangouts. Having many makes it harder for the government to snoop.

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  • (Score: 3, Touché) by c0lo on Monday May 14 2018, @11:45PM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday May 14 2018, @11:45PM (#679823) Journal

    Buy competition and tank their products so people are left with your products

    Looks like MS is practicing dumb capitalism: after they extinguish the bought product, they remain with no product of their own to sell.

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  • (Score: 2) by Kawumpa on Tuesday May 15 2018, @04:58AM

    by Kawumpa (1187) on Tuesday May 15 2018, @04:58AM (#679954)

    Normally yes, but what Microsoft really excels at is buying a competitor for shitloads of money and then tanking them without a working inhouse alternative. I don't really know what the strategy or aim behind this is apart from burning money and pissing off your userbase. Professor Christensen?

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 15 2018, @10:03AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 15 2018, @10:03AM (#679997)

    Isn't this capitalism 101? Buy competition and tank their products so people are left with your products?

    Except they destroyed their own product (MSN Messenger) first.