
Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Skype Brand - gorbachev
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-10/don-t-skype-me-how-microsoft-turned-consumers-against-a-beloved-brand
======
Jun8
"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 ..."

This is absolutely _not_ the bulk of the problem: simply put, the call quality
is horrendous and dropping calls in the middle of the meeting is quite common.
Modus operandi in most Skype conference calls in our company is to spend the
first 4-5 minutes in handshaking ("can you hear me") and troubleshooting
problems.

~~~
std_throwaway
I don't understand how software can get this much worse. Having done
absolutely nothing would have left Skype in a better shape than what we have
now.

What did they do with it? Do they not regression test? Are they letting each
new intern add a new feature while nobody really cares about quality? Did they
just replace the old software with a new bug-riddled software that's getting
pushed out the door without quality checks? Is it some manager trying to earn
a medal by using that new MS-framework to rebuild everything and needing to
push it out fast to declare success and move up while leaving the ruins
behind?

~~~
erikb
Always when you hear the word "Enterprise" and it's not related to Star Trek
it usually means "company that has made it so far and so stable up on the food
chain that from now on they don't need to work hard anymore". If you have
never worked in Enterprise software development, think about putting 100 first
semester students into a room full of drugs and costumes and then letting them
act "professional".

What do you think happens if you hand over a relatively well developed
software to such a team? Now let a few years pass and you have today's Skype.

~~~
eksemplar
Skype for business is absolutely excellent though. We run it as the sole phone
service for more than 10.000 employees and it’s the best we’ve ever had
software wise. Further than that I can find, chat with or call my counterparts
from our neighboring municipalities as though they were from our own.

We also frequently use it for video meetings on our Microsoft surface (or
whatever that 80” touch screen thing is called) and it works like a charm.

Private or normal Skype is one of the worst apps I’ve tried in 2018 though.

I wonder if it’s because they tore out the peer-to-peer stuff that made Skype
great in the oldendays and replaced it with azure.

~~~
packet_nerd
> Skype for business is absolutely excellent though.

I beg to differ on this.. we use Skype for business and have heard nothing but
complaints.

One personal beef I have with it is IM messages don't sync between devices. I
start a chat with someone on my workstation then when I leave my desk and try
to see it on my phone it's unavailable. Or same issue when switching between
an RDP and local session.

~~~
sebtoast
If you enabled it (it is by default I believe), the conversations are stored
in Outlook.

It sucks... but you can still get to them if you have access to Outlook.

~~~
telchar
When you say "you" here, do you mean "you" or the BOFH somewhere who controls
the Exchange server? I stopped opening Lync at work because, among other
issues, it wouldn't save conversations and I couldn't figure out how to make
it do so.

~~~
Sylamore
Most versions of Lync/Skype for Business allow you to keep conversation
history locally in Outlook. It's under Skype for Business> tools> options>
Personal> check whether you have ticked “save IM conversations in my email
Conversation History folder”. It can be disabled by the SfB admins though.

Newer versions do support server side logging to your Outlook mailbox too but
it must be configured by the SfB and Exchange admins.

------
komali2
I bet one hundred dollars that if I tried to login to my old Skype account
right now, it would take an hour to figure out how the fuck to reset my
password, because"Microsoft account" bullshit.

I bet it would take me three hours to make a new account, for the same reason.

Try making an account for Microsoft's iot cloud thing. Good luck.

Edit: [https://youtu.be/lfby-SOWWqQ](https://youtu.be/lfby-SOWWqQ)

So, holy shit, somehow it auto populated maybe using Google smart Lock, and
logged me straight in... To an account I don't remember ever creating. No
contacts or anything so it's not my old legacy account. Lemme see about
logging in on my old one

Edit2: guess it's time for me to eat my own words. I definitely remember this
being an absolute nightmare. Turns out the hardest part was accessing my
decade and a half old Yahoo account
[https://youtu.be/QVLz08OiMGk](https://youtu.be/QVLz08OiMGk) all my old
contacts are lost though :( bye bye old WoW guildmates

I do maintain that the iot site is garbage and I still can't log in or create
an account on it.

~~~
ng-user
So are you going to donate that $100 to charity?

~~~
sillysaurus3
Speaking of lost bets:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6703467](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6703467)

I just lost a 5-year bet for $10 to Keyframe
([https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Keyframe](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Keyframe))

It would be mildly interesting to have an HN-bets type service, with the
proceeds going to charity.

~~~
howaboutnmc
This website is not very active, but it does what you want :
[http://longbets.org/](http://longbets.org/)

~~~
quickthrower2
This is a job for .... <insert fanfare> .... blockchain!

------
mnkypete
Um.. I'm not sure the article author is familiar with the fact that "Skype for
business" (the "complex" one) is actually home grown and was just rebranded
from Lync. This is not at all the same as the consumer Skype, which actually
tries to be a weird mixup between Snapchat and whatnot at the moment (failing
utterly of course). Skype for Business (+ PSTN calling) is actually pretty
great on Office 365 tbh...

~~~
gambiting
I work at a large corporation where we use Skype For Business and I swear,
this is probably the worst piece of software I have ever used. They can't get
basic things right - I can send a message to my coworker right now, and it
will appear in the list of messages on his machine _somewhere_ in between past
messages. For a while, we had someone who couldn't receive any attachments,
skype would just say "failed sending" \- we had an actual Level 3 tech support
from MS remote over to his machine to find out the issue, it was some broken
registry settings. Selecting and copying text is a lottery - sometimes it will
copy exactly what you highlighted, sometimes it won't - which is bizzare for
an IM program. And then there's the conferencing, oh my god the conferencing.
If you are in a conference room and someone left another account logged in
with skype open, then no other user on that pc can make/receive calls - the
only way to fix it is to restart the machine. I honestly can't believe we're
paying money for this thing.

~~~
Someone1234
Skype for Business is actually being deprecated and replaced with Microsoft
Teams[0].

Microsoft Teams is impressive that it actually manages to have a worse desktop
client than Skype for Business, and the web site is barely any better. If
people on O365 haven't used it, they should since Microsoft will force it on
you sooner or later.

It is like Microsoft wanted to clone a bunch of popular services (e.g. Slack)
and just mashed them all together without a care in the world, and to top it
off had to make a bad UWP desktop application that needed touch support so
they cut 90% of common features to fit in enough voidspace into the UI for
touch.

[0] [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/faq-
journey](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/faq-journey)

~~~
aendruk
I feel compelled reiterate to the world how astonishingly bad Teams is. We've
been using it since its release and some days I'm convinced that there must be
some internal management issue causing employees to deliberately sabotage the
product.

~~~
thoughtpalette
Honestly I've found Teams to be preferential to Skype. The Screen Share
features works heads over heels better than Skypes. Though It'd be 10x better
with the standard Unicode Emoji set and having URLs to Online Meeting's like
Skype.

------
ivraatiems
Consumer Skype isn't just awful for calling, it's also awful as even a basic
chat client now. Recent mobile updates have made it much, much harder to use
and began prioritizing a SnapChat-style "stories" feature that nobody asked
for or wanted, because there's already an app for that called SnapChat.

I switched from Skype to Discord, as did pretty much everyone I know. It has
all the same features Skype used to have - good-quality audio and video chat,
friends lists, private messaging - with the added benefit of no ads and a
server system for congregating with large groups. It also has more and better
third-party integrations, and good feature parity between apps/web
client/desktop client.

I'm sure at some point Discord will get bought out, and then slowly ruined, as
Skype was, but at that point I suppose we'll all just jump ship again to
whatever the next thing is.

I haven't used business Skype, but have never heard a word of praise for it.

~~~
kalleboo
I've seen a lot of bizarre app pivots in my day, but the VoIP-to-Snapchat
clone pivot is by far the strangest. There is no planet on which it makes
sense.

We also switched to Discord, which is kind of crazy if you think of it. An app
for gamers working better for work than a Microsoft VoIP app.

------
jgaa
Why is everybody hating skype? It's great!

\- It's almost as fast as SMTP for messages (pulling every 30 minutes or so).

\- If someone calls you, it never rings on the device you're currently using,
allowing you play with that other device you had totally forgotten about.

\- It does it's best to distract you from what you want to do (communicate),
by teasing you with social features you hate.

\- It's user interface is awesome. Trivial things becomes real challenges -
like finding the button for screen-sharing. (I have spent weeks trying to
figure out how to upload a profile picture - and I go to sleep every evening
knowing how delightful I will feel when I finally find that easter egg!

Seriously - Skype was great. But unfortunately, everything Microsoft touches
turns into dirt. That's just how it is.

~~~
gear54rus
This is a problem for people who trust MS updates. I use old (7.41) Skype on
Windows 7, old (7.46) Skype on Android.

\- It doesn't pull every 30 minutes, that's just wrong.

\- It rings on all devices for me

\- No teasing with social BS

\- Button for screen sharing is one right-click away like it always was.

Take back your freedom from BS updates and you will be alright.

~~~
m_mueller
Also, Skype 7 at least still lets you export its damn history.

------
bonestamp2
The current version of skype is rife with usability problems, they dropped a
lot of key things since the last major version...

\- The mute/unmute button hides itself, even when your mouse pointer is ready
and waiting right over top of it (to click when it's your turn to speak)

\- To add more kick to the nuts, they also apparently removed the mute/unmute
shortcut key

\- Screen shares dim when your mouse is over them

\- If you're watching a screen share, you can't reply to someone else without
hiding the screen share

\- System music is no longer paused when a call comes in... not a big deal,
but it was nice before when it would pause your music

\- Favorites no longer exist and pinned sorting sucks now, it was better when
these two lists were separate

\- You can't change the width of the contact list, now it's always too small
or too large depending on the window size

All of these things were fine in the last major version.

~~~
m_mueller
But think of all the cool things they're doing with this additional space!
Like showing blue default profile pictures scaled up to half your screen so
you can't see the document you actually want to edit together...

------
patrickg_zill
My view in the past was, that MSFT was essentially paid by the NSA to buy
Skype and then remove the ability to make secure calls with it, by sending all
the media (audio/video) through centralized servers that could easily tap the
calls. Am I incorrect in that?

Previously, Skype was peer-to-peer after the call was setup, with Skype
servers only helping in setting up the call (essentially updating the registry
of "who was where" in real-time).

EDIT to add:
[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/12/nsa_offers_billions...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/12/nsa_offers_billions_for_skype_pwnage/)

[https://lists.randombit.net/pipermail/cryptography/2013-May/...](https://lists.randombit.net/pipermail/cryptography/2013-May/004224.html)

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-
nsa-...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-
collaboration-user-data) (summary of certain Snowden docs)

(just a few links among many available)

~~~
yodon
It’s hard to remember back to those days but there was a huge
legal/congressional pushback against p2p technology driven by the big media
companies who saw p2p as the core enabler of file sharing. One side effect was
the legal risks of providing p2p services were looking way heavier than
traditional client service services. Skype was also heavily used in those days
by people who wanted “anonymity” not from the government but from other users
on the web. The old p2p architecture allowed users to discover each other’s IP
addresses and either attack or discover identities of the other person on the
call. I won’t for a moment pretend to say I think Microsoft has made good
decisions around Skype (the UI is an unmitigated disaster that somehow still
manages to get worse with each new release), but I do believe there were a ton
of reasons back in the era of their switch from p2p to client server
architectures that did make it the legitimately correct engineering decision
in that moment. That’s nowhere near as fun an answer as the NSA conspiracy
theories, but engineering decisions don’t have to be fun.

~~~
komali2
I remember back then ISPs would just block p2p traffic outright every once in
a while to see if they could get away with it.

One time I got a piracy warning (not dmca, just like an angry generalized
letter) because I had p2p traffic... For torrenting Ubuntu lol

------
mikelward
I bought an Xbox One with Kinect just to use Skype with my family. The good
quality camera and mic, and the ability to have everyone gather around on the
sofa and see each other on the TV made it seem worth it.

After the "upgrade" to the unified Windows app a few months back, we've given
up and are now using Hangouts on our phones. That's how bad it is.
Counterintuitive design, hard to use with media remote, unreliable call
establishment. Such a waste.

I guess it's my own fault tho, because the only reason I bought the Xbox One
was to replace the Logitech TV Cam HD that Skype also broke post-Microsoft
acquisition.

~~~
mistermann
Does anyone know of:

a) Any semi-affordable, braindead easy to use, consumer product or something a
person can rig up for good quality family-sitting-on-the-couch video
conferencing, with good quality and reliable audio and video?

b) A multi-platform Skype alternative that can call land lines?

This is what Skype _should_ be. Google and Amazon both have popular home
consumer devices, I would imagine Microsoft would love to be a big player in
that market, and yet their best entry candidate for that (in that they could
probably get tons of users early) is Skype, which they seem determined to
destroy with absolutely insanely destructive UI changes.

Satya has done an absolutely incredible job at changing so many Microsoft
divisions around, yet Skype continues to get worse, it seems absolutely
surreal to me.

~~~
chx
> Any semi-affordable, braindead easy to use, consumer product or something a
> person can rig up for good quality family-sitting-on-the-couch video
> conferencing, with good quality and reliable audio and video?

Screw the semi-affordable part, I would pay several hundreds for that.

~~~
kwindla
Our startup makes hardware that I think almost meets your description. We try
to be excellent quality, super-easy setup, and easy to use:
[https://hardware.daily.co/pluot-tv](https://hardware.daily.co/pluot-tv)

But our target market is company conference rooms and home offices, so we
might not feel quite "consumer-y" enough for you.

~~~
chx
My use case involves a nine year old...

------
binarymax
"Microsoft Corp. says the criticism is overblown and reflects, in part,
people's grumpiness with software updates."

Denial is the first stage of acceptance. Not sure how long the full cycle
takes for a company as large as Microsoft, but Skype is dead.

~~~
razakel
>"Microsoft Corp. says the criticism is overblown and reflects, in part,
people's grumpiness with software updates."

Maybe because your approach to software updates is as intrusive and user-
unfriendly as possible?

I have to switch my PC off at the mains to stop it from waking up at 3am,
rebooting and losing everything I have open, installing updates and then not
going back into hibernation.

------
wittekm
Skype for Android is unbelievably bad. I uninstalled it after the following:

\- a spam bot texts me asking to connect - which, whatever.

\- my locked phone wakes up from sleep and /launches into Skype/ to show me
this exciting information

\- it literally could be solved by a notification

\- it is not configurable in settings

I can understand the "bypass lock screen" behavior for an incoming phone call,
but this is such an unbelievably bad interaction even for contacts you do
know, nevermind contacts you don't.

Skype engineers - and I know you're reading this - show this to your PMs.

~~~
oblio
The real way they should benchmark their app is do similar actions on 2
identical phones in Skype and Whatsapp. Skype is slow opening up and sluggish
afterwards. It gets stuck sometimes... Whatsapp is fast and flawless, in
comparison.

------
harel
What I find most interesting about Skype is that it rose from the ashes of
Kazaa, and as far as I can remember was originally using a similar/same
backend and peer to peer protocols to facilitate the calls. When MS got I
think they removed the peer-to-peer elements (which made skype great) and made
it a centralised service. At least that is my recollection of events.

~~~
iforgotpassword
Yep, it used kazaa "supernodes" as servers for call setup and finding other
nodes. Read an article about this a long time ago where someone reverse
engineered it. There was also a lot of details about how Skype contained a
shitload of anti reverse engineering techniques.

~~~
Kliment
The source for that is "silver needle in the skype",
[http://www.secdev.org/conf/skype_BHEU06.handout.pdf](http://www.secdev.org/conf/skype_BHEU06.handout.pdf)

------
kome
The article is about "Skype for Business".

But let's talk about the Skype for consumers. They transformed a nice software
in one of the most clunky and unusable and frustrating experiences ever. The
UI is just that broken.

The thing is that try to follow all the last shitty trends of development and
webdesign, and the results are absolutely horrible. The new Skype
"electron"-like interface for MacOS is the worst UI I saw in a long time... No
thinking behind it, just trends without actually understanding them for real.
The designers clearly never used Skype one day in their life. They made it
impossible to use.

I am urging anyone that wants to talk to me to use Telegram those days.

~~~
ksherlock
I deleted it and reverted to an older pre-electron version. The one-page HTML
user interface is painful to use. I just want to make cheap phone calls, not
join a social network. Socialism sucks.

~~~
kome
Socialism?!?

------
dandare
> But Microsoft has paid a price for prioritizing corporations over consumers.
> > Skype has tried to be all things to all people

Statements like these only obfuscate the real problem, that is, Microsoft
simply doesn't give a flying fuck about usability and user experience. In
their eyes, ease of use is not a product feature that you can charge someone
for.

------
hitekker
For business, just use Zoom. A few months ago I fired it up after years of
neglect and— wow— the client connected to the meeting no update required.

Now that’s software built for the future.

~~~
StreamBright
Same, I actually moved companies to used Zoom just by showing them how easy it
is to do everything with it. The mobile clients are prime example of great
mobile software. I can do confcalls for hours while my batter does not drain.
I need to charge my phone after 1 hour of Skype call.

------
goofballlogic
There's still an opportunity for Microsoft to fix this. They definitely have
major problems with basic functional requirements at the moment (like reliably
displaying messages that another person has sent to you in chat), but there's
not really another offering out there with the brand associations that the
Skype name comes with.

All they need to do to bring people back is simplify and focus on robustness
of the key functions. However, I'm not sure there's much of a business model
they could exploit in this way. Using Skype is free. I've used in for about 10
years and in that time I've maybe spent £40 on paid calling. That's not enough
to sustain a high quality offering. It only works if consumer market is the
entire focus, leveraging the strategies that the like of Facebook employ.

For these reasons, although it wouldn't be hard to fix, I reckon it won't
happen. But who knows, Microsoft have done some things in the open source
arena over the last five years. Maybe one day they'll run a product like Skype
simply for the satisfaction of owning the world's best online calling service
(and the money would surely follow).

~~~
makecheck
They can’t repair an app that people just delete and refuse to download
“updates” for (as I did after about the 4th downgrade-billed-as-update graced
my phone).

------
ajross
Skype would have been destroyed at this point by Google and Apple and
Facebook. Platform integration always wins over early movers once the giants
catch up technologically.

The real story is that MS wildly overpaid for a brand that they couldn't
leverage and that they didn't need to target the corporate market where
"Skype" (which isn't actually Skype, just rebranded MS code!) is doing well.

~~~
yiyus
At least in Europe, Skype is actually being replaced by WhatsApp, so I do not
think platform integration is the main issue.

~~~
Fnoord
Not only WhatsApp, but mainly WhatsApp. Telegram has a small, devout userbase
and the gaming community has largely migrated to Discord.

------
api
There's some kind of law in operation that states that all chat and telephony
apps must evolve toward increased suckitude. I've lost count of how many good
chat/voice/video apps started decent but then over time accumulated bloat,
experienced degraded service (often due to bloat or a shift away from p2p),
and got encrusted with gimmicks and marketing junk to the point that they
became unusable.

I suspect it's because simple chat, voice, and video is a relatively bounded
and commodity feature set. Everything must justify its existence, so there's
always a drive to add more features and bloat to attempt to differentiate.
Over time that swamps the original design. This is a problem for all software
but it seems particularly bad in the chat/telephony domain.

I also think the move away from p2p driven by lightweight mobile devices (and
I suspect also by governments) degrades service. Non-p2p links are by
definition higher latency and lower bandwidth as they're passing through
additional indirect relay devices.

~~~
makecheck
It’s the same curse that other utility apps suffer, if they aren’t open
source: there isn’t anything attractive about _maintaining_ them. Smart
engineers that built the thing move on to better projects eventually. The only
“new” things left involve revamped UIs and misguided monetization strategies.

------
titanix2
In a sense it's amazing how such a good product turned to such a mess. It
really took a lot of work and engineering to destroy a software to this point.

------
ComputerGuru
Skype hasn’t ever (with people I know) been “beloved,” merely tolerated as the
only option back when it really was, well, the only option.

Today, Skype’s voice quality is as bad as it was 15 years ago but even the
cheapest alternatives from 3rd party cross-platform vendors easily put it to
shame (such as voip.ms) and free offerings from the big names (Google’s Voice,
WhatsApp audio, Apple’s FaceTime Audio, etc) also do the same if you’re
willing to deal with network lock-in or privacy issues.

Skype video chat is basically unusable: the latency multiplier is horrendous
and the video quality is at best subpar and extremelyhorriblt noisy.

The client itself is a mess. Ugly, bloated, difficult to navigate, constantly
changing, buggy, and more. It’s been that way since the redesign years before
MS bought them out (Skype “Classic” was the last “OK” release on that end).

What’s to love, exactly?

------
Bhilai
Saw someone post this on twitter:

Escape room idea:

You are in a conference room with \- a projector \- a speakerphone \- guest
wifi \- camera \- A surface laptop with slide deck \- and a Skype meeting …

You can leave when everyone can see the slide deck and hear the presenter.

------
codedokode
Several years ago MS released a new, "RT" version of app for Windows. One of
the differences is that it doesn't even have an option to disable updates. So
if Microsoft decides to add more ads or integrate more Facebook pages or make
the app even less usable, you cannot opt out of that.

By the way, I hate updates. Today I updated Sublime Text and the background of
code changed from light grey to white, making it harder to read. And they
removed all bright themes (including Dawn), leaving only dark ones with poor
contrast.

~~~
T-N-T
> One of the differences is that it doesn't even have an option to disable
> updates

Even if you could disable updates it doesn't matter because Skype is a
centralized client-server architecture under Microsoft and I've personally
witnessed friends who wondered why they couldn't use skype anymore on their
computer because they had an old version installed of the desktop client and
it couldn't connect to the servers anymore. Past a certain amount of time,
Microsoft invalidates old versions and render them unable to connect. Whether
it's by changing the protocol or just banning their ability to pair, I don't
know, it's an implementation detail, the intent remains the same : update,
update, update.

From that point of view of how it works in the real world, the RT version is
an improvement over the desktop client because it's able to always remain
updated without having to ask for user consent. There are too many users who
don't say yes to updates and then ask why the software is broken and won't
work later and I bet it has been a pain for people who work in the support
side of Skype. The average user does not understand why the software stops
working.

------
pmontra
Skype for business is not Skype, it's Lync with a new name
[https://products.office.com/en/skype-for-business/online-
mee...](https://products.office.com/en/skype-for-business/online-meetings)

That said, the true Skype is not as good as it used to be. I kept using
version 4.3 on Linux until the servers stopped working with it. The reason is
that the new UI is horribly biased towards video calls, which I don't do often
and surely not with friends. For them there is WhatsApp since it became
available and every single person I know uses it.

Problems with the Skype UI, in case somebody from Microsoft reads these
comments. This is version 8.20 Linux, which is a huge improvement over the
previous main version (screen sharing works). The use case is talking or
chatting with customers, small or medium companies (in the European way so
small on the American scale). None of them had Skype for business, many use
Slack.

1\. When I start a voice call the chat is not opened by default. It should.

2\. When I open it, it's a narrow column. The rest of screen is totally
wasted. Maybe it's hoping that I start a video call, which I won't because I
started a voice one. The chat should fill the screen, Slack like. The is no
way to resize the chat, or they made it very difficult to find it.

3\. There is a lot of white space around text, which I understand
typographically but it doesn't allow me to see much back in the history unless
I start scrolling, which I didn't have to. There should be an option for a
compact mode. I've been tempted to open the Electron container (a zip), change
the CSS, rezip and check if it works.

4\. Messages used to have a visible timestamp. They don't have one anymore
unless one clicks on them. This makes harder to find when somebody wrote
something.

As a consolation, Hangout is possibly worse. The only advantage is that one
can share a link to a group chat. Skype can't.

The result is that one customer of mine always used Hangout. Another one
switched to Hangout for the group chats and we used TeamViewer when
screensharing didn't work in Skype for Linux. I'm the only person in the team
to use Linux (the others are on Macs) but everybody switched. That for whom
thinks that supporting Linux is not important.

------
brudgers
The article mostly focuses on business users. It cites a single consumer use
case and in it person switched their mother from Skype to Facetime. To me,
that seems like the most likely explanation of Skype's position in the
consumer market: there are competing alternatives that didn't exist ten years
ago when Skype was a private company. My suspicion is that Microsoft purchased
Skype in 2011 as a response to Apple's introduction of Facetime in 2010 (at
least in part). Skype allows Microsoft to be in the consumer space and across
platforms. It's worth noting that at the time of Microsoft's Skype
acquisition, it was not yet apparent that Apple would never make good on its
statements suggesting Facetime would be an open protocol. Because the issues
are structural, it's hard to see an obvious case where "Skype would have been
better if not for Microsoft." Particularly since it was owned by private
equity when Microsoft bought it.

------
mikekij
I haven't been able to log into Skype since Microsoft bought it and associated
user accounts with their live.com service. I can't find any account
credentials, can't get a username reset / password reset, and can't create a
new account, because it says my email address is already in use. It's
infuriating.

------
Vagantem
Is this not Microsoft business model? Purchasing a service, pump it for money
and run it to the ground? See MSN, Hotmail, Skype, Minecraft - and LinkedIn is
next (who truly think LinkedIn is better after MS got involved?). Perhaps Xbox
is their only success.

------
victor106
I tried using Skype recently and the UX is horrendous. I mean just to make a
call is so hard.

The product has zero focus.

If you want to learn what NOT to do look at Skype

------
zenbob
Am I the only one who thought pre-Microsoft skype was a poorly-functioning
product?

~~~
newsbinator
Pre-Microsoft Skype suffered from connection issues, poor call quality, and
dropped contact lists.

Post-Microsoft Skype suffers from connection issues, poor call quality,
dropped contact lists, impossible to find options, and a user interface
designed to be Snapchat.

Calling my mom's phone, which is at the top of my address book, takes like 6
touches, and that's because I do it often enough that muscle memory overrides
UI confusion.

------
coffeemug
I always thought Skype kinda sucked. I used it due to lack of alternatives,
but always begrudgingly. The UI was confusing, it crashed frequently, it was
hard to find people, there was the awkward paid internet->telco layer.

WhatsApp is such a dramatically better product in exactly the same way Skype
never was. The UI is straightforward, it never crashes, finding people is a
breeze, and I can call, chat, and share rich media so seamlessly I basically
forget I'm doing it.

The world has moved on. Skype was a good product for its time, but I'm not
sorry to see it go.

------
sunstone
Skype was bought during the era of Ballmer and it was quite predictably going
to deteriorate. Almost immediately Microsoft re-architected skype from being
peer-to-peer to a central server backend. The primary purpose for doing this
seemed pretty clearly to make eavesdropping easier.

Some suspected at the time that Microsoft was acting as a proxy for the US
government in taking over Skype because otherwise the business justification
looked pretty shaky given the purchase price and the relative ease of creating
a competing technology. Given all of that people abandoned the system in
droves.

~~~
gesman
^^^ This.

------
keithnz
The thing I hate is that once they got skype they killed windows messenger,
which I thought worked really well. Then they nerfed skype itself.

Now I just don't use skype at all. However our PABX does go through skype
services to make calls, but you don't use the skype client for that.

The need to call landline / mobile numbers seems gone because 1. its a lot
cheaper / flat fee on many telcos 2. who uses landlines? ( 800 / call center
numbers perhaps ) 3. mobiles can run voip apps

------
Aardwolf
I don't think this has anything to do with "Skype for business"?

At least from my perception what happened was that a program+app that once
simply just allowed two persons to talk or videochat between phones and/or
PCs, became more bloated, buggier and more demanding, forcing people to look
for a simpler better working alternative.

This alternative seems currently whatsapp. Til that one becomes too bloated
and buggy I guess. Then there'll be a next one.

------
makecheck
Not only did they impressively annihilate the client and ruin the server
protocol, they managed to invent new ways to fail.

For instance (probably caused by protocol changes) my parents’ _television_
has a Skype app that doesn’t work anymore. And the TV helpfully displays an
error message _every single time the TV turns on_ , that can’t be fixed (we
checked) because the built-in app is just broken now.

------
red_admiral
The first time Skype really annoyed me was when it decided that all video must
be in 16:9 format, with no opt-out, resulting in the picture basically being
cropped at the top and bottom in my case.

The second time was when it auto-updated to the "modern" version which removes
the list of all your contacts, showing which ones are online.

For the time being, go.skype.com/classic.skype lets you get the "proper"
version back. For 1-on-1 online video chats when skype is playing up I can
also recommend appear.in, you don't even need to download anything, but it
doesn't have a full contacts feature either.

There was a time when everyone in the publishing industry used PageMaker,
until they suddenly switched to Adobe (if Joel is to be believed). I wouldn't
mind if the same happened to skype, but I don't know what the alternative is
yet.

~~~
bonestamp2
> which removes the list of all your contacts

Ya, they fucked this up. Favorites are no longer supported but you can "pin"
your "favorite" people so they go to the top, unless you have an unread
message from a non-pin then that goes above your pins. But after you read your
unread message from your non-pin then that thread is moved below your pins,
so... good luck finding that again after you've had a few of those threads! It
was far better the way it was before when the favorites and other were
separate.

------
tristor
The problem with Skype is the software is terrible. Connection issues, even
strange things like working audio and video but only some attendees being able
to see screen sharing. Somehow it still has devotees even though far superior
products like Zoom, Slack, and even Hangouts exist.

~~~
taurath
It doesn’t. Microsoft just will never admit that it’s bad

------
BuckRogers
I was recently looking for a PC-to-PC only text chat program to use between my
computer and my wife's. We text using iMessage otherwise. Part of the
requirement was to be able to see when the other person was online/away. The
latest Skype is terrible, along with basically every other Windows10 chat
program available today. I can't tell if companies are trying to hide when
their contacts are online/offline in order to encourage constant engagement
with the app or if it's just a broken design.

I just needed a simple program that just worked, like AIM & MSN were. We ended
up settling on an old standby, Trillian. It's one of the few that works as I'd
expect one to. I don't use it on my phone but it syncs a lot better between
devices too.

~~~
dragandj
You might find Telegram incredibly useful for what you describe.

~~~
BuckRogers
I tried that one, from the Microsoft Store and it didn't show when people were
on or offline in my tests. I liked the idea behind it though, end to end
encryption like iMessage.

I don't know if these modern messaging apps are using the same framework or
what, but Skype/Telegram and whatever else I tried seem almost identical. I
took away the idea that they were trying to encourage usage and engagement by
not letting you know when someone had shut off their machine or not. Like a
push to always be connected, install the mobile app and then not worry about
ever being away..

that concept doesn't work for me because my phone has nothing but SMS/iMessage
and calls enabled. I am trying out two more options though, since I'm always
looking for better privacy/encryption.

Retroshare & qTox are two that I'm currently testing. I'm not entirely happy
with Trillian's encryption (nonexistent).

------
nikolay
Many people replaced Skype with Viber as there's no spam. I have a very old
Skype account with a vanity username, which results in tens of Russians adding
me and wasting a few minutes a day blocking and reporting them for spam. Also,
when abroad, Viber's audio codecs seem to use less bandwidth and provide
better audio quality.

I actually like the new Skype very much, but the spam issue needs to be
solved!

There are many fake accounts, no way to merge different Microsoft IDs, etc.

I have to agree that Microsoft by not having its full attention on Skype
ruined a huge potential! It allowed many messengers to bloom when it was
basically a monopoly.

Honestly, there's very little that needs to be done to make Skype better and
I'm not sure why Microsoft cares less about it!

~~~
saagarjha
> Many people replaced Skype with Viber as there's no spam

Except from Viber themselves, that is.

~~~
nikolay
I agree! They obviously don't want to learn from the mistakes of others!

------
RandyRanderson
For those of us that can recall, skype wasn't that great even before the ebay
purchase.

It seems like no one (incl google hangouts, msft, etc) has been able to solve
the online conf call problem. Maybe it's not solvable? And no, other solutions
are terrible too (join.me, ringcentral, etc).

I don't think i've _ever_ been on a Internet-supported conf call where there
hasn't been at least one major issue.

My cynical mind tells me the telcos have some custom software/hardware that
detects conf call traffic and starts dropping packets but maybe that's just
negative thinking[0]...

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_throttling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_throttling)

~~~
drblast
The most stable video conference software I've used was Microsoft NetMeeting
circa 2001. It was simple and it just worked, and on very slow networks too.

I don't know what happened since that that's the high water mark.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_NetMeeting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_NetMeeting)

------
LoSboccacc
Wait. Skipe was necessary for a while as the only workable free solution and
established a good marked hold lasting till now, but I don’t remember a single
day when it was beloved. It always was a compromise between free and not
terribly broken.

------
hedora
I switched to signal for calls to android users and facetime for everything
else a long time ago.

Long term, I’m rooting for signal, but their video chat stuff for iOS is a hot
mess (low speakerphone volume, front facing camera only). In the short term,
I’m considering buying an iPad for my parents, specifically for facetime.

Both are preferable to skype by a large margin. Every time I opened it for the
last year or so before I gave up, it went through “this device is
authenticated, but probably stolen” login hoops.

This was before they overhauled the app, and saw the big nosedive in ratings.
I’m definitely not going back to that platform.

Maybe I’ll add the signal foundation to my list of charities his year.

------
brynjolf
Me and my mom have used Skype for ages. The history is a big feature of that.
With the new Skype I can't search that history, only newer stuff. Also she is
permanently offline to me, she can't get notifications since there seems to be
a mismatch between versions. Also if I use new client and search it shows me
matches that don't matter at all, due to removing the search per conversation
and turning it into a horribly messy universal search. I hate the new
interface because it is worse, not because it is new. It is pleasant to look
at, atrocious to use.

------
paul7986
Skype is flat out a bad user experience so much so it’s downright hostile to
its once rabid user base.

I used it daily from 2004 to about 2016 when I lost my password. Trying to
reset it somehow got me into a loop where the only way I could was to enter my
credit card. Umm nope and see Skype. I now use Facebook messenger for the same
VOIP calls I was making thru Skype.

I guess Microsoft is going to jack the crap out of LinkedIn next as they are
making lots of money but in the long run their focus on $$$ vs. UX is going to
bite them in the ass.

------
spsrich
The Skype UWP app is horribly buggy. My wife is forced to use Skype for
Business, I swear the first 20 minutes of each call is people getting kicked
off, people who can't be heard, etc.

------
11thEarlOfMar
Example: Used to be that if I needed to find something in a chat from days or
months ago, I typed Ctrl-F and entered the search term and then navigate among
the hits. It was instantaneous and I used it all the time.

Then everything changed. Ctrl-F did nothing. I couldn't find a search box. I
googled how to search and wound up downloading a 3rd-party app (?). Later, I
discovered that I had to go to a different place in the app and then select
where I wanted to search (users, chat sessions, the Web, ...).

Bloaty, ignorant,... pissed off!

------
bwb
The UI/UX is so bad it makes me cry. It is unusable, I have so many contacts
on there and use it when I travel but it rarely even boots up without a system
crash...

------
StreamBright
I really wish MS was better with UI/UX and understood humans. Skpye and Skype
for business are both disasters to use. I avoid them at all cost. Not sure why
can't they just copy Zoom for example which is an absolute bliss to use, low
energy usage on mobile, intuitive easy to use UI and also has the right
features. I know it does not have the same chat capabilities as Skype but I
don't miss that too much in an enterprise environment.

~~~
ConceptJunkie
> I really wish MS was better with UI/UX and understood humans.

The thing is, I always felt they were great at UI up until about the late 90s.
Then things started going downhill. Now the inmates run the asylum and
Microsoft's UI/UX is as random and punitive as anything else.

------
gnicholas
I've received invites to Skype for Business meetings from folks at HP and MS.
It never works. I literally cannot join without creating a Microsoft for
Business account (which isn't clearly free — perhaps someone here can
enlighten me?). I've tried with the Mac application and with the browser
plugin (which it seems never to detect). Finally gave up and did voice calls
instead.

------
imartin2k
Every time I launch Skype, I recieve messages from some 2-3 contacts linking
to malware (always different people). This has been going on for a very long
time and shows to me the demise of this once beloved tool. It’s basically
unusable. The only reason why I keep it is because of SkypeIn & SkypeOut
(calling phones and having a German phone number connected to my account).

------
seanalltogether
Does anyone have a recommendation for taking USA calls in another country
other than through skype? I currently have google voice forward to a skype
number that i lease from them. I use google voice for texting friends back
home, and skype to make the calls. If I could take skype out of this equation
or move texting and calls to just one platform that would be great.

~~~
supertrope
Take calls directly from GV with Hangsouts dialer app on your smartphone. Or
port the number to Twilio, callwithus.com, CallCentric, flowroute.com, VoIP.ms
and use a SIP soft phone or physical IP phone or ATA. Bets solution for you
depends on what physical device you want to use and ease of SMS integration

------
bambax
> _“It was the biggest asset in the space at the time with the most recognized
> brand,” says Lori Wright (...) Focusing on corporations was a reasonable
> strategy..._

The value of the Skype brand was with the consumer market! Microsoft doesn't
need a new strong brand (other than its own) to go after corporations...??!?

------
MR4D
When RIOT gets to a more usable state (see the other post recently on the
remaining issues), Skype is going to die.

------
rozhok
1 GiB to store nice animated emojis from movies — check 1 GiB RAM usage when
actively chatting — check poor voice quality — check constant, annoying and
completely useless redesigns — check "rate the call" after the each call —
check

well...I only use it because I have clients and people who sit only in Skype.

------
uhhhhhhh
100% yes.

I used to use skype with all my family. the MS bought it and quality
noticeably dropped after redirecting all calls through their servers instead
of p2p.

we moved to other services and except for my cousin no one uses it anymore in
our family.

Move it back to p2p, improve call quality, and I'll recommend it again.

------
boksiora
new Skype is awful, but you can still use the old interface

from this page [https://www.skype.com/en/get-
skype/](https://www.skype.com/en/get-skype/) \- choose "Get Classic Skype"

hope they continue to support the old interface

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I'm only offered "classic Skype for Win10 mobile" (not my definition of
classic!), or regular Skype for iPhone or Android.

------
andreygrehov
What are some good Skype alternatives?

~~~
Retroity
Discord is pretty alright. It has most of the features that I want (Video
calling, search, server administration, etc) and the "gaming" features are
pretty easy to ignore.

------
trisimix
Skype died before the acquisition for me personally. Platform just wasnt
closed enough to pull the types of things they were pulling. Nobody wants to
pay per call for voip, or subscription model for a service that hasnt
demonstrated any improvement.

------
BadassFractal
What exactly is beloved about Skype? It's been superseded in almost every
possible way by most video conferencing and messenging competitors out there.
It's felt like it's been on life support for the past half a decade.

------
dgudkov
The old Skype was perfectly usable. The new Skype sucks. But if not Skype then
what? Needed:

\- VoIP for groups

\- Built-in screen sharing

\- Chat/messenger

\- One-click voice calls without the need to switch off camera every time
(looking at you Hangouts Meet)

\- The ability to call or conference in a phone number.

\- Built-in file transfer

\- Free :)

~~~
palisade
Discord

Edit: The only thing it doesn't do in your list is call a phone number at the
moment. Though, I heard about a bot that can make calls for you not sure if it
works.

------
romanovcode
Since MS bought Skype it is gone to shit. What is even worse is that even with
the "Windows Integrated Skype" which suppose to work seamlessly I get
notifications about messages days later. This is just pathetic.

------
yodon
I’m pretty sure you have to fail a test to get into the Skype UI design team

------
celim307
I mean, I feel like Microsoft cares more about having an inhouse messaging
system to use internally rather than pay slack. Same reason amazon uses chime
and makes no effort to market it outside Amazon

------
sidcool
Microsoft acquired Skype for $8+ billion. That figure always sounded too high.
And it's not reaping the benefits they would have liked. But I guess MS just
has too much money to care.

------
skate22
I use skype pretty regularly outside of work. Its pretty convienient,
especially if i need to share a screen quick. I never really have connection
issues related to skype.

Most people have it, and its simple

------
j45
I'm not sure if Skype was beloved. It was in many ways the first to do what it
did at scale, during it's Peer 2 Peer days, was more usable than any version
of skype today.

------
ggg9990
Such incompetence. I’d prefer to use Skype so I can use my Xbox Kinect and the
big TV for video chat... but I can’t make my parents figure it out. So
FaceTime it is.

------
SN76477
I use skype every day for calls with my team.

The problem to me is that it has become bloated. Banner ads, search functions,
emos, bots, ratings... ugh

just give me simple clean messaging with calling

~~~
mattbeckman
It's the first app in a very long time that I downgraded to a previous
version. Previous version is available from their download page.

------
zerostar07
I believe you can download the older version "skype classic" from somewhere.
It keeps nagging me twice to update , but no i won't do that again.

~~~
swtx
The "classic" version is available here:
[https://go.skype.com/classic.skype](https://go.skype.com/classic.skype)

~~~
saagarjha
Great to see that that's still around. I had to go dig up a copy from Time
Machine when they "updated" to Electron.

------
Yhippa
New Skype is bad and the product owners should feel bad.

------
z3t4
Conference call used to be a lucrative business, then Skype came and killed
revenues with their free offerings. So what do you do ?

------
Havoc
Every time their mobile updates I think "Well it can't get any worse"...and
then the boys at MS prove me wrong.

------
sgt101
The problem is that there's no money in it. People won't pay for voice chat,
it's an add on service for TV.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
That doesn't really explain the timeline of crippling and disabling it. Surely
is cheaper to reskin and fix bugs than it is to, seemingly, recreate the whole
thing every year.

~~~
sgt101
I think that there's an existence tax for any software; if you don't spend a
certain amount it just stops working. On top of that Skype is out in the wider
world and so faces maintenance costs that a lot of enterprise software
doesn't; ux updates, OS updates, security, interfaces to network kit and so
on. If you have a nice pipe of revenue then this is all affordable and extra
money can be sunk into making it good... but I suspect that Skype just doesn't
have the revenue stream required to support that.

------
camdenreslink
I had a lot of issues a few years ago when Lync became Skype, just rebranded.
I haven't had as many issues lately.

------
z3t4
Personally I only use Skype for video calls, and sometimes for land-line
calls, and it works great. I use the web client. It feels weird to read all
the comments here. I think the problem is that most people use Skype as an IRC
/ Instant messenger / MS-messenger replacement, but MS didn't recognize that
and screwed up that part of the app.

------
bit_4l
Remember the good old days when we started the conversation with "Can you hear
me?"

------
ijafri
It was a consumer product until Mircosoft acquired it, now it's neither.

------
_rpd
I just use Google Hangout. Microsoft Skype has become bloated adware.

~~~
newsat13
Sorry to break it to you, but Hangouts is dead.

~~~
tshibley
This hasn't been my experience at all. I've been interviewing for internships
back in the US while studying abroad this winter/spring, and basically
everything has been done over hangouts (since I don't have international
calling).

------
jdlyga
I would much rather trust Google Hangouts for meetings than Skype.

------
EugeneOZ
Blaming users is a most favorite excuse of stupid developers.

------
textmode
Original HN title: How Microsoft destroyed the Skype brand

------
avodonosov
Skype is ok, skype for business is difficult

------
ryanmarsh
Sounds like a business opportunity.

------
ebbv
Skype is dying because the client has been bloated and slow for ages along
with poor call quality and reliability. Those two things together made it far
less appealing than the many alternatives.

------
xstartup
This is very true. Skype had huge exploits and some blackhat folks went to
Skype support and told them that the victim's account is treating them and
Skype banned victims can't without any investigation.

Skype also banned victim who was infected with a malware where malware would
just post links to other people to remove them randomly from groups.

Skype just bans you for no reason. I've lost one of my most valuable business
accounts to scammers who used malware attack to destroy my account.

------
jacksmith21006
Now use Duo. Have kids now spread around and video conference them in at our
Sunday dinner and Duo has very good video quality and way better audio quality
versus anything else have tried.

