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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.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by DannyB on Monday May 14 2018, @08:08PM (10 children)
There was once a time I used Skype.
It worked on Linux. I use Linux. My mother in law (at that time) used Ubuntu (now uses Chromebook).
It worked on Mac and Windows. Two other people (at that time) used Mac and Windows. (Now one of them has become an adult and after a few more years, moved out.)
It worked on everything we had and needed.
Then came Microsoft.
No More Linux !!! Don't you know Linux is a Cancer ?
So we moved to Google Hangouts.
It works on everything.
Any computer with a Chrome browser (and that's a lot).
Chromebooks.
Android devices, including very cheap children's tablets.
We had even once received a Hangouts video call from one of our young kindergarten age nieces, without the parent realizing it.
I didn't like Microsoft buying Skype. But I would probably still be using it if they didn't skrew it up -- which is difficult to imagine. And Microsoft did pooch screw Skype.
So I'd rather give my personal info to Google. Because, after all, Google isn't evil. I know this because Google says so. And Google wouldn't lie about that, because, Google isn't evil. After all, Google says they're not evil.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 5, Informative) by frojack on Monday May 14 2018, @08:29PM (3 children)
Given that you have resigned yourself to being spied on with every call, the wise choice is to go with what works, be nimble and capable of moving.
Sometimes old is new again.
The XMPP world is slowly adopting the OMEMO standard of end-to-end encryption of text, voice, and video.
(OTR works pretty well too, but its complicated to get working, not grandma friendly.).
OMEMO is opportunistic and pretty automatic.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday May 15 2018, @02:37AM
Speaking of the old, whatever happened to SIP phones, such as Linphone? Apparently, they're still around. See https://www.linphone.org [linphone.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 15 2018, @10:06AM
Too bad nobody ever made a serious attempt at an XMPP server for Windows. Every single one is some crap that needs a weird runtime installed (e.g. Eiffel), needs to be started manually through a BAT file, and usually configured via some text file.
Meanwhile, every third grader with Visual Studio community edition can make a hello world program that comes as an MSI file and installs as a Windows service.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday May 16 2018, @01:37PM
It's not just being spied on with every call. It's much better than that.
Conclusion, Google doesn't really do all that much spying, and really doesn't know very much about anyone.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Monday May 14 2018, @09:27PM (3 children)
Microsoft has released updated versions of Skype for Linux. They even host repositories so you can get your updates automatically.
Of course, being Microsoft, they screwed things up a little while ago, pushing out updates that claimed to require newer versions of GLIBC than were available on the platforms they claimed to support. People reported that, if you forced the installation, Skype worked, so it did not actually need that newer version of GLIBC. Amazingly, Microsoft actually fixed this issue and pushed out a new version that didn't have the GLIBC foobar.
I don't understand why they don't just make it work in a browser.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @10:26PM
It does work in a browser! You just have to download the browser and its associated node.js runtime.
(Score: 5, Funny) by BK on Monday May 14 2018, @11:08PM
Just to be clear, you're looking to have Microsoft make Skype work only in Edge? I guess that would be the final nail...
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 15 2018, @10:13AM
Have they started supporting Linux audio drivers again, or is audio still only for people on Windows and Potterix?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @10:22PM
Since the official Linux client was released, there has never not been a working Skype client for Linux. Heck, the old v4 Qt-based client (you know, the one which had all the features and actually worked) only EOLed last year.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Monday May 14 2018, @11:22PM
11 years ago, I wrote a game for my kids that played a video in DVR style: question pops up on screen - upon getting a correct answer, a snippet of video plays as reward, then pauses and shows the next question: rinse-lather-repeat, for as long as you like. That was a simple thing to do, 11 years ago, on a specific platform with a specific format of video.
Since then, video tech has been mired in the abyssal plain where nobody with power wants it to work, nobody wants any guy with a computer and a little knowledge to be able to roll their own video apps. Little snippets of what is possible pop up here and there, but still, to this day, if you just want to get your hands on a raw video stream from a camera and put it down in a file with your own simple program calling an API, it's a mess. Much less put together your own video chat software without using somebody's lock-in, constantly evolving (breaking existing code) API.
Try QTox - it's a nice attempt at a video chat application, except that those people who are trying quite hard to make something work, still have issues with stability that just shouldn't be issues anymore.
🌻🌻 [google.com]