George Anadiotis: "Skype's call quality deteriorated over the years. Skype's stagnation as a product opened the market for others." Skype had changing priorities and product visions under three different owners in six years. The company was sold to eBay in 2005, then spun off to private equity and ultimately acquired by Microsoft. Larry Dignan: "Skype was hampered by corporate machinations. There's nothing to manage or worry about random people adding you as a friend." Send a link, participants join, hang up when you're done. Signed out, uninstalled, and never went back.
That's also when the spam and scams started. Jason Cipriani: "I quit using Skype years ago after it turned into a messaging, VoIP and video chat app. I asked my colleagues at ZDNet and here's what they said: What did Skype do wrong to give Zoom such an advantage?
How to transfer files during a Zoom meeting.How to share documents onscreen in a Zoom meeting.How to turn on virtual backgrounds in Zoom.That's a long path for a service, and users, along with their expectations, have changed a lot in those 16 years. Skype is not a program that I'd be happy giving to people who aren't used to handling spammy content.Ī few people also mentioned the idea that Skype was a service before its time, and since its release in 2003, it has been through a lot of hands and shifted from a hybrid peer-to-peer service to a client-server service before ending up in Microsoft's hands.
Every time I open Skype (which, admittedly, these days is not that often) there's always a pile of spammy detritus to wade through. Bugs would take a long time to fix, and more bugs would pile up. The Skype apps are also pretty bloated, and updates would leave me scratching my head trying to figure out how to do something that I had no problems doing before the update. I wouldn't rank Skype as the worst app I've used, but it was always something that I couldn't trust and rely on fully.
I've used it on a variety of platforms - Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android - and they've all been headache-inducing. Skype applications have not been the most reliable apps, whether on the desktop or mobile.