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: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday May 15 2018, @03:59PM
MSN Messenger had a brilliant image-sharing feature. You could send a set of images to a friend and you could browse them like an album. You could slave yourself to their view or vice versa, or browse by yourself. I expect someone else has something similar but why they didn't think to keep that feature, or something more useful than slapping an image in the middle of a conversation, I don't know.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk