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Facebook Wants To Buy Skype
An anonymous reader writes "Remember when we learned that Facebook had resumed talks with Skype? Well, it turns out that Facebook is considering buying Skype outright. 'Skype is reportedly talking to Facebook about some sort of deal. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been involved in internal discussions about buying Skype, while Facebook also reached out to the Luxembourg-based company about forming a joint venture.'"
It seems that Google is looking at buying it too, which I'm hoping for since they're much more likely to open things up.
I'm not sure how to feel about this one. On one hand Skype as a company could do with a huge amount of improvement. Their support is frankly the worst I've ever dealt with from a company of their size, and their software is only one release away from breaking again (and never worked correctly on Android).
I don't have any love for Facebook as a company, but frankly I have such a low opinion of Skype that it couldn't get too much worse, at least I hope. The funny thing is that I pay Skype hundreds of dollars a year for a service which is only borderline passable, but just like the telcos they're the only game in town, so there is no motovation for them to improve.
If Google released a competing product tomorrow I'd switch. And, no, Google Talk is NOT remotely comparable to Skype.
XMPP video with Pidgin.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
One reason is that Skype has always worked well even if both call participants are behind a NAT. Which other software had this at the time Skype was launched?
Adam Connor with Facebook previously stated the following; apparently in reference to gaining access to the Chinese market.
"Maybe we are going to censor our content in some countries” ” We have dealt with many unpleasant situations because we allow too much freedom of speech in the countries that have not experimented this until now" http://www.gev.com/2011/04/facebook-and-freedom-of-speech/
I know for a fact many users and businesses use Skype because it's encrypted end-to-end. Now, that may have already been compromised some time ago and thus no longer secure in China. But, I for one believe that Facebook would hand over the keys to the Chinese government in a heartbeat. I doubt Google would as there's already a bit of contention between those two.
Life is not for the lazy.
If, like me, you do not want all your private information "integrated" with Facebook and its ever-changing use of private information, maybe this is the time to contact Skype (maybe via posts to their blog?) and letting them know how you feel about having all your calling information and other Skype data "integrated" with facebook. I for one have long ago deleted my Facebook profile after I started seeing how pervasive their tracking and data agglomeration on individual has become and how lax they are about sharing that data with other vendors and application developers. I share Julian Assange's assertion that Facebook is "near-evil" and cannot imagine continuing using Skype if it is a Facebook extension.
Really? Are we going to stick with this "change the source yourself" argument?
*sigh*
I tried using Ekiga... couldn't get it to work between a Windows and a Linux client. I wanted to video-chat with my wife and kids while on business trips. Then tried several video chats with no consistent success. Grudgingly tried Skype, and it works great. I now can video chat with my parents across the country as well.
Sorry, but Skype even on Linux just worked.
I have a CS degree (from way back) but I am no longer a programmer. I'm not about to pick it up just to get video chat to work.
If Facebook buys it, it will make me sad because I abhor Facebook.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.