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Microsoft Turned Customers Against the Skype Brand (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Since acquiring Skype from private equity investors, Microsoft has refocused the online calling service on the corporate market, a change that has made Skype less intuitive and harder to use, prompting many Skypers to defect to similar services operated by Apple, Google, Facebook and Snap. The company hasn't updated the number of Skype users since 2016, when it put the total at 300 million. Some analysts suspect the numbers are flat at best, and two former employees describe a general sense of panic that they're actually falling. The ex-Microsofters, who requested anonymity to discuss confidential statistics, say that as late as 2017 they never heard a figure higher than 300 million discussed internally.
Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella has repeatedly said he wants the company's products to be widely used and loved. By turning Skype into a key part of its lucrative Office suite for corporate customers, Microsoft is threatening what made it appealing to regular folks in the first place. [...] Focusing on corporations was a reasonable strategy and one shared by Skype's prior management. Originally [former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer] and company pledged to let Skype operate independently from Lync, Microsoft's nascent internet phone service for corporations. But two years later the company began merging the two into Skype for Business and folded that into Office. Today, Microsoft is using Skype for Business to help sell subscriptions to its cloud-based Office 365 and steal customers from Cisco. Microsoft has essentially turned Skype into a replacement for a corporate telephone system -- with a few modern features borrowed from instant messaging, artificial intelligence and social networking. In closing, Bloomberg argues "the complexity of the corporate software (security, search, and the ability to host town halls) crowds out the simplicity consumers prefer (ease-of-use and decent call quality)."
Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella has repeatedly said he wants the company's products to be widely used and loved. By turning Skype into a key part of its lucrative Office suite for corporate customers, Microsoft is threatening what made it appealing to regular folks in the first place. [...] Focusing on corporations was a reasonable strategy and one shared by Skype's prior management. Originally [former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer] and company pledged to let Skype operate independently from Lync, Microsoft's nascent internet phone service for corporations. But two years later the company began merging the two into Skype for Business and folded that into Office. Today, Microsoft is using Skype for Business to help sell subscriptions to its cloud-based Office 365 and steal customers from Cisco. Microsoft has essentially turned Skype into a replacement for a corporate telephone system -- with a few modern features borrowed from instant messaging, artificial intelligence and social networking. In closing, Bloomberg argues "the complexity of the corporate software (security, search, and the ability to host town halls) crowds out the simplicity consumers prefer (ease-of-use and decent call quality)."
I imagine letting the NSA crawl up their ass had more to do with it.
What does Skype offer that VoIP doesn't?
Microsoft really manages to kill every company it buys.
Look at Google Trends of "Minecraft"
Look at Google Trends of "Skype"
Remember when it bought Hotmail and MSN?
They try to provide services to an old "corporate world" that is slowly dying.
Young employees are using Slack and Discord, surf on reddit and listen to Spotify.
Skype and Skype for Business are different products, not vaguely compatible with each other (which is part of the mess up that MS inflicted). Office Communicator was rebranded Lync (fine...) and then re-branded "Skype for Business" without changing the technology base (bad, terribly confusing).
S4B is generally dreaded even by microsoft users (though when it works and everyone has the software working *and* their respective organizations can talk to each other *and* policies actually allow the meetings to work... it's not too terrible most of the time, apart from some general UI glitchiness...) When you have an attendee using OSX... it almost works sometimes. When you have a linux attendee, well you are out of luck for anything but text (officially), unofficially you can get a plugin for pidgin which can sort of participate in calls and screen sharing (the UI is a bit challenged for pidign-sipe, but is actually more powerful for the functions that work).
For all the rhetoric about "oh Skype's ailing because of focus on business needs", S4B compares poorly with pretty much all of its business oriented competitors.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
MS's handling of Skype is "good" example of how to run a product right into the ground:
* Shitty redesigned UI remake that no one asked for, and
* Forced updates that removes features
Q. How could MS screw it up even more?
A. Delete old threads
* https://community.skype.com/t5...
I'm surprised Microsoft hasn't deleted this thread yet:
* https://answers.microsoft.com/...
the new Skype on WIndows simply:
a. doesn't look better than the old one (okay this might be a personal opinion)
b. is way more uncomfortable to use (options hidden or not available,...)
1st my family switched to WhatsApp, then the company I work for also dropped it for the same reasons.
-> basically everything seems better then Skype now, seems like they want to get rid of it
There's nothing i love more than clicking the 'call' button 4 or 5 times before it actually initiates the call or going through 15 different screens to transfer a call whereupon it just cuts the caller off anyway or it just plain old crashing whenever somebody tries to call me.
They may be hurting Skype with all that they are (or are not) doing.... but Skype For Business IS NOT SKYPE. It's just Lync renamed. There are still two very different pieces of software, and they are not remotely compatible. Hence why using Skype for Business (aka Lync) on Linux is not just as simple as using Skype For Linux... Clear as Mud, I know.
Move on.
Those smiley faces on every delivered message makes everyone look like an emoji intoxicated teen. Feels so embarrassing to use for professional work. Luckily I haven't had to use it for over a year.
Hey Beau,
Might want to fix your link - You're linking
https://www.bloomberg.com/news...
When you should be linking
https://www.bloomberg.com/news...
So MS should just fork it, and not destroy what used to have a reasonable interface for single users.
. . . Oh. I just looked. They already did.
your link is brok-dik
I don't know what their major malfunction is; but MS has a singular "talent" for taking wildly successful Products and turning them into useless piles of shit.
I know, because they are currently doing that for the ERP product I Develop in for a living.
I was a huge user of Skype for years and made sure it was implemented in my workplace. Today, it is the complete opposite, I hate it with a passion. Here are my reasons:
- Incessant and unnecessary updates. As a work tool, I really don't need to update a collaboration software every week or even twice a week. Sure, if it's a privacy or security issue, warn me that an update is needed. If not, you can just let me know once every 6-12 months.
- Everyone that I know that uses Skype uses it for text / video calls with history. That's it, nothing else. It was doing that fine in the original versions, stop trying to shove useless features that are not requested or needed.
- For a "simple" text / video chat application, it shouldn't take gigs of ram and a decent amount of cpu at idle (I've seen 15% in the tray, minized). There is no way you can coat this. It should be ~100MBs tops (and I'm generous) and a flat 0% cpu, I'll even allow 2% usage while its open.
- It should not for ANY reason use ports 80 or 443 by default (which it does)
- The whole windows 10 apps debacle... We had Skype for desktop, then windows 10 came around and apps were all the craze, they created a Skype app, tried to move the whole user base to it, which I unfortunately did, losing all previous chat history. Then months later, they told us the app wasn't working out and said we should move back to Skype desktop? Yet again losing history.
How does the saying goes? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I was out the door at that point.
I'm always surprised at work when people decide to use Skype for meetings. It's so much easier to use something like Zoom instead - it's a lot more straightforward to use, and there's a lot less hassle involved.
This is old news...
Microsoft always turns customers against the Microsoft brand.
In general, I have always some issues with MS user interfaces. It is topped only by Oracle based stuff. In general, it is always a matter of priorities. One should not have to get lost in the menues like finding the keypad to dial a number. I had also less issues with Skype before it had been aquired. Zoom is an example of a communication software which has a pretty good UI.
My company uses Skype. We all have a Skype for Business account, but nobody uses it because it's inferior in every way to the regular Skype (which isn't that great itself these days). So we all have to have two accounts.
Everything Microsoft touches turns to ash.
Delete all source code commits to the skype repository from the day Microsoft acquired it. Fix any outstanding security issues. Skype goes from being a piece of shit to a mature, reliable, multiplatform service that everybody loves. Just run qmake and nmake or make to build the skype client - from the same source tree - on Windows, OS X, and even Linux!! Can you imagine? It's like something from a distant utopian future that can never be!
Google made a similar mistake with Google Talk when they transformed it into Hangouts. Who is using it now? Everyone has moved on to messaging apps for personal use and apps like Slack for work.
Long story short, my hotmail email was stolen under Microsoft's watch. Someone used it for spam. I can't use skype now a decade later. There is no recourse.
It is the unintended consequences here. I can't use skype, therefore the people I do business with can't use Skype to talk to me, therefore requiring us to use something else. Once your clients have installed something else and figured out how to use it, its not that scary anymore.
If Microsoft has another use case similar, forcing honest folks like myself to use other services, and their clients, it doesn't take long to see a ripple over time. People either don't need to sign up, or end up using other software at least half the time.
I removed the package from my Mandrake Linux machine and zeroed out my premium balance the day after M$ acquired.
Why can't we go back to using jumpers to configure slot adapter cards? Why? I say!
It's remarkable how many most incompatible messaging/conferencing apps there are. It's as if the various email domains were unique and you couldn't email wasn't interoperative. Even on Windows, they generally don't play well and are hard to install/update.
Depending on who we are trying to meet with, off the top of my head, there is Skype, S4B, WebEx, Zoom, AT&T Connect, GoTo meeting, Chime, Google Something, Adobe Connect, Sametime and probably lots more.
It's a pain if you are the one who is stuck using whatever your clients ask for. It's even worse as some of these require admin rights to install, and many seem to have "critical" updates weekly (which also require admin rights).
It sucked then it still sucks, and MS hasnâ(TM)t improved anything. Call quality is garbage FB messenger works much better. Im forced to use Skype for Business at work and find it flaky at best. Rubbish.
I use Skype for Business at work, and it is almost as good as it was back when they called it Lync. (That's high praise for Microsoft, as usually products go downhill as the version number increases). But I had family who used Skype years ago, and they haven't used it since Microsoft bought it. They use Apple Facetime and gave up entirely on people who don't have Apple products.
Side point: I know Android has a video chat feature, but I've never gotten it to work. My wife and I on the same plan, same exact phone, same Wifi, but still can't get it to work. It just gives ambiguous error messages. (Old-school geeks remember fondly when programs told you what went wrong so you could diagnose the problem.)
I have used Skype for a long time. It worked fine before the UI was updated, and I did not enjoy having to relearn where almost every single UI element was located. But I would not have had a reason to stop using it until the ability to store a telephone number for a Contact was removed. Literally half the point of Skype is that it bridges the online world and the telephone world. I used it in a foreign country to call an 800 number for my travel agent when I needed help. 800 numbers don't work in foreign countries - THAT WAS USEFUL and it saved my bacon. But now I can't add new phone numbers to contacts, and I am looking for a Skype replacement. You want to know why people are leaving? Well, I imagine I'm not alone. :-)
In case no one noticed both google and microsoft have promoted east indians to positions of authority and power, they then discriminate against specifically white people and have nearly destroyed both organizations. They are utilizing SJW propeganda and the like to essentially take out the core producers within the organizations while stuffing the roles with inept east indians.
The result is that these american institutions are failing and no longer pose an economic threat to their own country of origin while at the same time lining the pockets of multiple east indian families feasting upon the dying bodies of these institutions.
We always thought that just better programming etc would bring down microsoft by creating superior products (IE linux), but in truth they are rotting from the inside out with insane decisions that could be interpreted no other way than internally malicious forces purposely tearing them apart.
The forced updates, bricking machines, infinite reboot loops, taking the machines out of service during work hours, the telemetry data, the hiring racism, it all makes sense if you see it as a foreign power attacking these organizations from within and everyone being too afraid of being labelled racist for taking them to task at what we can all see in front of our eyes.
On the other hand, good time to get your feet wet with linux.
Skype for Business fails at instant messaging. Any other messaging client (including business competitor Cisco Jabber) can properly handle people logged in from multiple places. Microsoft's offering? I can be mid conversation with someone, and suddenly their messages start going to another desktop 3 buildings away that's been locked for hours, or my phone, or who knows where. How hard is it to send the same messages to all clients logged in with the same user?? If anything it should be easier than whatever fail logic it's applying to try and figure out which one is the "active" session...
Admit it, nothing acquired by Microsoft has gotten better or desirable.
It's by far the most unreliable software I have to use.
They're currently doing the same with Linkedin. I didn't have a special love for it before but holy fuck are they spammy and obnoxious now.
The company at which I'm currently working used to do internatinal virtual meetings with Skype, before Microsoft bought it and for a short time after. They now do the meetings with Zoom.
I used to maintain a profile with LinkedIn. I haven't updated it since Microsoft bought the company.
I smell a trend.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
MSFT kills anything good. Look at Nokia. Dead.
Skype - dead.
Desktop programming - dead (on Windows).
Privacy pre-Win10 EULA. Dead.
I haven't touched a server running Windows since 2008. Don't see the point.
What I want from MSFT is Win7 to remain the same, patched for security and performance issues, but NOT sucking our privacy through that damn EULA and their crazy "suck all data" monitoring.
I don't want Win8. I frackin' don't want Win10. I don't want AI, speech, or a touch interface. I want a stable platform that supports my applications.
I need applications that work the same on all the platforms we use. That's Windows, iOS, Android, Linux and OSX. When we travel, we use Android and iOS tablets, not desktops, not laptops. If MSFT wants to be relevant, they need to target all platforms equally.
And they need to stop killing off good things.
We put credit on our Skype account which Microsoft pocked it because we didn't use it within a couple of months. No warning when we paid not anywhere we could see it. A bunch of dishonest pricks. Avoid.
Skype for Business is also almost impossible to remove. Unlike regular Skype, it can't be "uninstalled" in the normal way and requires registry hacking plus changing security privileges on certain executables to render it inoperative.
That executable, by the way, happens to be named "lync.exe" and many of the supporting files are similarly named. They look nothing like regular Skype.
No matter, though, Microsoft Teams is replacing Skype for Business, which itself "replaced" Lync, which itself replaced Microsoft Communicator.
Kriston
Especially Windows 10. Microsoft needs r
to snap back into reality. People are fed up with the data-mining adware conflagration with so much redundancy contained with in and a habit of frequently tying up the machine while it updates.
Right now is a great time to found a startup positioned as a direct competitor of Microsoft by being a vendor of secure, intuitive and no-nonsense client OSes with a robust server OS and enterprise network technologies and protocols. Perhaps their own version of what we know as Azure and Microsoft Office. Bonusts if it can seamlessly interoperate with Windows software along with its own software ecosystem.
I'd do it but writing an OS takes a small city's worth of talent (not to mention an army of lawyers to navigate the patent minefield) and a lot of capital. Despite the fact that the Windows we knew and loved is no longer, it would be a hard sell to venture capitalists, OEMs, IT departments and individual users. It ain't easy to dump a system we "know", even if it turned to mush by its latest release.
and yet Satya Nadella is doing the exact opposite of that.
I had hardware skype cordless phones. They worked without having a computer turned on, I didn't have microsoft software on my main computer, with the base station by an upstairs window I got about 250 feet line-of-sight range with the cordless handsets.
Microsoft stopped supporting the protocol they used and they stopped working.
I'm aware of Snowden revealing that Skype is integrated into the NSA XKEYSCORE system but I'v given up hope of getting average people to use a secure end-to-end encrypted system. I talk about business on the telephone and go talk to people in person about anything else.
I can't help but suspect that it was the Skype team. Given how horribly they integrated into Microsoft Accounts, it really smells like the Skype team was hoping that Microsoft would sell them off in a year or so. It really does seem like Skype is trying keep itself siloed from the rest of Microsoft's consumer products.
I avoid Microsoft whenever possible but I still used Skype. Microsoft turned it into such a giant piece of crap I'm now scouting alternatives.
Skype's new user interfaces are terrible (I use the plural number because since the MS acquisition the program has been changing its UI continuously). They are not intuitive, not self-describing, not discoverable, hide the most used features, and just drop features that wouldn't fit in the UI design of the moment. They are also slow and buggy. They make me feel like a old man because every time I have to use Skype, I find out that something has changed and now I don't know how to use it anymore. This usually happens in front of the people I am conferencing with, which makes it even more embarassing.
No, I think the article is spot on.
Microsoft has done two things that individually make sense, but together spell disaster:
They have acquired Skype the consumer product, and made it a Microsoft federated service.
They also rebranded Lync Messenger as Skype (for Business), but they customary drop the "for Business" part.
So now there are two incompatible products called Skype, both with near identical branding.
What could possibly go wrong?
Speaking as a business user, Skype is appalling.
1. The UI cannot be understood by looking at it. You have to click on things to see what they do, and then remember what they do.
2. The UI cannot be understood by looking at it #2 : there are indicators in the UI, and I have no idea what they mean, and no way to tind out.
3. After a conversation is idle for a minute or two, Skype removes the conversation from the chat window with that person. It's stored somewher else - lord knows where. I have no chat history in Skype.
4. File attachments do not work.
5. Adding users from search to my contacts list works only intermittantly. Often Skype says "I cannot do this right now". I have to try later.
Finally, the biggie : Skype is fully scanned and recorded by the NSA.
It's unthinkable to use it, even if it was amazing.
The reason Skype is used in business is because most businesses gravitate towards the worst possible choices. Software is not chosen by software engineers, who know good from bad, but by managers, who read feature lists and price schedules and imagine on the basis of these lists they can choose the right product.
No, I think the article is spot on.
Given that the link is to "Apple Leaves Overseas Cash Out of Its Latest Quarterly Report", I think it's spot off. Yay, Slashdot editing!
Xbox was the exception to failures with Microsoft and consumers. In most cases Microsoft fails at being a Apple or Google for the consumer.
If you look at Microsoft's focus its more on the business side of things like Azue, Office 365, etc. Skype was never about consumers because they are unwilling to spend money for technology like business does.
I'm imagining it: We'll get the hottest tech and networking guys from the NSA on your pet project, STAT!
What could go wrong? - Well, they could make is slow, laggy and unreliable too...
The whole family drifted to Facetime and Wassup. Only Netcraft still needs to confirm that Skype is dying.
I had created numerous groups, its been an arduous task deleting each and every one of those fucking rooms because either they refuse to go or they keep coming back. Hate my buddies who use it and insist on it rather that SMS. Lync is another POS based on skype.
i have gone from 'meh - i do not care' to really really hating skype. it eats memory, cpu and desktop (really, the best way is to run it on another virtual desktop on w10). it updates so often that i am really fed up - just this morning i tried to disable all the updates and i did not found any way (so far).
i am not accustomed to this. every sane program has it's 'p*ss off' switch somewhere, but in this version in this funky UI (fully deserves the hate of the internet) there's few but quite useless switches.
they say that linux ain't friendly, but going through group policies to stop updating every other day is neither.
I miss the MS Messenger feature where it kept a list of who you had recently chatted with.
I also wish there was an easy to use shared whiteboard feature for meetings.
their best feature is you dont need to use them at all except for maybe windows and office
everything else theres no point to install it, their browser is shit, their media player is shit, their skype is shit, but here is the key:
its optional shit, you can download something else, that does not suck balls, and use that instead
for example, i just use the operating system, everything else i use is not from microsoft. There was a time, in the distant past where people would not need to bother to look for other software and just used the default, thats a very distant past since they decided all their software had to suck for some reason. Even windows itself sucks, you just need it for compatibility reasons, thats it. But all their software sucks. Microsoft, literally, only has one good product: their basic mouse. Everything else is inferior garbage
Major security flaws with skype. Big enough you could drive Trump's ego through. Running skype? Someone could take over your machine as admin and OWN you. It's been reported, they know about it, said - tough. No patch for it anytime soon, if ever.
How can they make their product worse and worse for each release? There used to be option for inverting/mirroring/flipping your image, but that is long gone. And the linux client implementation must be the worst thing I have seen in yonks - it is impossible to make it grok a camera that cheese is perfectly happy with.
That is why.
Incomprehensible product lines works for Google, so why not Microsoft?
Jitsi.org
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
"Given that the link is to "Apple Leaves Overseas Cash Out of Its Latest Quarterly Report", I think it's spot off. Yay, Slashdot editing!"
Slashdot editors are future Microsoft engineers!
chokyewfatt
FaceTime and WhatsApp are easier to connect, as they only require the phone number.
Skype is stagnating or falling in terms of user-base because of smartphone chat & VoIP (including video call) apps like WhatsApp, Viber, FaceTime, Telegram, etc.
I used to use Skype a lot, then once I got a smartphone and most of my contacts got on Viber I just stopped using it frequently. Whereas before I used Skype pretty much every day, now I use it maybe a couple of times per month...sometimes months go buy without using it. It wasn't a conscious decision, it happened spontaneously. The smartphone apps are tied to what you normally use for talking to people - a phone. It's always with you...if you have someone's phone number, you can see immediately whether they use the same app as you do...there are video calls as well, and on top of that most of these apps have a desktop version so you can use them while at your computer. On the other hand, Skype for Android has always felt pretty bloated, my phone would always appear to slow down, it took a while to load, and it doesn't seem like something you want to keep on in the background for instant messaging.