The Rise and Fall of Skype

cnbc.com

22 points·mfiguiere··6 comments

Skype was one of the many programs that just got worse and worse every time there was an update. Microsoft could have simply bought the company and no longer made any changes, and it would still be great. Classic textbook example of enshittification.

Idk tbh how Microsoft pulled off Windows and Office but they showed real incompetence with Skype. OK, they acquired Skype and what did they do with it?! Let it rot for years. No vison, no new features....they missed the opportunity with mobile instant messaging and then Viber and WhatsApp took over, then they missed the opportunity with gaming and then Discord happened.

Then they wanted to acquire Discord for $10bn?! For what? Why? I think their grand plan for gaming is falling apart. First Discord then Activision Blizzard acquisition which will probably get blocked in the US too after it got blocked in the UK.

Sorry for the rant but Skype used to be great then Microsoft ruined it. They didn't learn anything from MSN Messanger. Btw it took them God knows how many years to patch that annoying IP leak thing that was happening because of the Skype's P2P architecture.

Fun fact, if you open the Developer Tools inside of Microsoft Teams you can still see some mentions of Skype in the API calls.

I believe Teams actually uses some of the Skype architecture for video / voice calls. That may have changed in the newest versions.

If you use Teams in the browser it even shows up as part of the URL.

The account that runs the Teams Room app is called "Skype", the default admin password is "sfb" (Skype for business), and to edit some settings you need to upload a XML called SkypeSettings.xml.

Lots of Skype remains.

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