Microsoft is killing off Skype after years of decline

Andyross

Microsoft is planning to shut down the once-dominant video calling application, Skype. The app was highly popular among internet users in the early 2000s but has suffered persistent neglect from Microsoft in recent years as the company shifted its focus to Teams as its primary messaging and team collaboration platform.

https://www.techspot.com/news/106966-microsoft-planning-shut-down-skype-may-amid-shrinking.html

When I started working from home back in the dark ages of 2005, used pre-MS Skype (on Win2K!) for mainly text and voice messaging. Never used it for video. Was still using it until I was laid off in 2016.

Sparkchaser

Andyross When I started working from home back in the dark ages of 2005, used pre-MS Skype

Same here. When I retired in 2008 and started doing consulting work I used it. It worked fine at the time. I think the farthest was NZ.

ThirdShifter

No one uses skype any more. Its like MySpace.

MS Teams is the way!

real_aurgathor

ThirdShifter No one uses skype any more. I

I was actually using it until very recently, and the main reason I stopped using it because I could not add money any more for outbound calling. Previously, one could add some money and then call land lines all over the world (for the most part) for pretty good rates until the money ran out. Since I don't call land lines much any more, $10 was enough for a couple of years. I ran out of funds close to the end of last year, but M$ has changed their outbound calls to monthly subscription to individual countries. The new per minutes rates were probably around 50% of the previous ones, but for a very infrequent caller like me, that would still amounted to be a more than 10x price increase.

A lesser reason was the proliferation of spam. That wasn't an issue 15 - 20 years ago.

thephantom

ThirdShifter

No one uses skype any more. Its like MySpace.

I use it to see my cousin who lives in Greece. It's free. It's easy to use. Yes, it does have some issues, but I've never had any spam on it. We just chat once a month or so. I don't use it to call phone numbers, just a video chat with my cousin.

What is a good, free replacement for it?

antdude

I don't like MS Teams. 🙁

Adalicia

thephantom
Discord does video calling.

thephantom

Adalicia Discord does video calling.

Thank you; I'm not familiar with Discord. My cousin and I need something simple to set up.

I'll look into it...
S

Somewhat-Reticent

thephantom [image] I'm from the 1900's

You may be, as am I, but covered wagons are from the (late) 1800's. 🤨

Adalicia

thephantom
Discord is a pretty easy to use program, you'll obviously need to download, install, and make accounts, but that is about it. If you can use Skype you can use Discord.

OmegaWolf747

Good riddance! Bring back MSN Messenger! That thing rocked!

Donoreo

OmegaWolf747 Bring back MSN Messenger!

ICQ FTW 🙂

OmegaWolf747

Donoreo That too. Maybe even AIM.

antdude

Donoreo ICQ FTW 🙂

IRC FTW. Wait, other (geek/nerd)s and I still use it. 😉

Somewhat-Reticent

OmegaWolf747 Pidgin ??

OmegaWolf747

Somewhat-Reticent I used that too back in the day. I thought it was very promising.

antdude

Somewhat-Reticent Pidgin ??

Trillian too. ;P

codezer0

Aa cathode ray dude on YouTube said,. Microsoft is very much software people, and never once hired any competent phone people. With that context in mind, it’s no wonder their telephony efforts (of which there were many more before and after Skype) that were just progresively worse with each iteration.

I’m glad as hell that I’ve never had to suffer the quagmire that is Microsoft teams. Not to say they were all bad ideas. He did a video of a small scale pbx that Microsoft released that SHOULD HAVE been great for small businesses that definitely didn’t have the resources to hire a dedicated phone guy to manage, but missed too many things that were essential to make such a system work effectively. And of course, abandoned when the software teams at Microsoft got bored or divested into their own firm.

Adalicia

codezer0
I don’t particularly like Teams but it does what it needs to do. Are there things I’d change about it? Absolutely. But it works as intended, for the most part anyway, and in our modern race to the bottom corporate hellscape that is usually “good enough.”

OzarkEdge

I installed and logged into Teams Free using my legacy Skype account, now an MS account without email… this installed the account into Windows 10 Settings (not my local user account) and logged in MS Edge and probably MS Office, too, if I had bothered to launch Word to find out. I uninstalled it all. I’m tired of being owned by Google and MS.

After looking around, I’m now evaluating Signal (Private) Messenger on Android (the master), linked to Signal Desktop on Windows. I registered my Signal account using a VoIP.ms DID exposed to Nobody… I will use Signal with a disposable username. So far, I like it… privacy with end-to-end encryption, data stored on client(s), and plenty of subtle and flexible functionality to easily replace Skype as I used it, and then some.

Some background on Signal can be found on Wikipedia.