Well, there goes Skype. Bye-bye, you garbage piece of software. I’m surprised you managed to hang around for as long as you did, frankly.
Okay, I’m being a bit mean here; the impact of Skype on the global tech ecosystem shouldn’t be downplayed, as it effectively brought video communication to the mainstream – something that previously was the domain of corporate execs with money to burn on expensive early video-conferencing solutions. For a wonderful, all-too-brief period in the early 2010s, Skype was everywhere: a way to chat face-to-face with distant relatives or schoolmates who were just beyond the reach of an after-class bike ride.
But I can’t pretend Skype was all sunshine and rainbows, even before the pandemic lockdowns and the rise of its chief competitor, Zoom. I remember sitting for ages waiting for a call to connect, frequent audio dropouts, and sometimes struggling to log in at all. Sure, internet connections are faster and more consistent now than they were when Skype was first conceived back in 2003, but that’s not an all-encompassing excuse for the app’s many failings.
The Microsoft problem
See, Skype’s greatest victory was also a sword of Damocles hanging over its head: its 2011 purchase by Microsoft. A multi-billion dollar deal that positioned Skype to replace Windows Live Messenger (formerly known as the ever-iconic MSN), the purchase proved to be an immediate boon for Skype, as it was widely inserted into Windows devices over the following years, thus reaching a massive global audience.
Unfortunately, this deal also meant that Skype was owned by Microsoft, which is rarely a safe position to be in. Remember Zune? Yeah, me neither. The list of products and services killed off by Microsoft over the years is long and storied, and many – including myself – saw the writing on the wall long before serious external competition arrived on the scene.
A key issue was Microsoft’s long-running and ill-placed desire to make Teams work. I’ll be honest: as someone who was, in a previous and much worse place of employment, forced to use Microsoft Teams, I can say with conviction that it sucks. Rigid settings, feature bloat, and an inexplicable ravenous hunger for RAM make it a frequently painful piece of software to use, especially on an outdated work PC.
But Microsoft wanted – and still wants – it to be a Thing People Want To Use, which ultimately led to Skype taking a back seat as its features were gradually cannibalized to improve Teams. In fact, now that Skype has officially been taken out back with a shotgun, Microsoft is actively encouraging users to port their accounts over to Teams.
And what did Skype get in return? A drip-feed of features that nobody asked for, most of which did little to improve the core video-calling functionality. The interface became more cluttered, frequent UI redesigns left users confused, and yet there was a paradoxical feeling of stagnation; meanwhile, the meteoric rise of social-media-driven video calling across platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp offered a far more streamlined and pleasant user experience.
Impacts of the pandemic
Zoom has been around since 2011 (ironically, the same year Microsoft acquired Skype) but you’d be forgiven for thinking that it just popped into existence at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. When we were collectively displaced from our offices and had to construct impromptu workspaces inside our homes, video conferencing became an everyday necessity – and as we all know, this was where the cracks in Skype’s facade really started to show.
Technical debt is never an easy hurdle to overcome, and Skype’s aging software architecture – while cutting-edge back in 2003 – gradually became a weight chained around its ankle. With Teams at the forefront, investing in updating Skype never seemed like a priority for Microsoft. The app didn’t even change over to a centralized system from its outdated peer-to-peer networking until more than half a decade after Microsoft bought it.
One of the worst blunders was Microsoft’s insistence on keeping it partially anchored to actual phone numbers (with a dial pad feature, no less) in an era when interlinked accounts are king and phones are more than just phones. It was no doubt a move intended to retain the crop of older users who were unaware of the alternatives, but the 100-user call capacity and streamlined interface of Zoom made it an easy choice for professionals who needed to keep their careers afloat while the world screeched to a halt outside.
Long live Zoom
It’s certainly not a universal truth that Microsoft ruins everything it touches – the Surface tablet line is finally good now! – but the tech giant has something of a reputation for enshittification. I’ve been following the gradual decay of Windows for years now, and looking at how Microsoft treats its most widely known product makes understanding the fall of Skype very easy.
I’ve settled into a belief that Microsoft isn’t able to just let things be what they are. Everything had to be more! More features, more information, more settings, more AI! Forget what consumers actually want; the line must go up, the goalposts must keep moving, everything must be constantly changing and innovating or it’s worthless. Once you start to see Microsoft as a tech company incapable of sitting still, its successes and failures all start to make a lot more sense.
What people needed for the remote working shift during the pandemic was an effective, straightforward video conferencing tool. They didn’t find that in Skype, which had already become a bloated shell of its former self after years of ‘innovation’ at the hands of Microsoft. So I say this now, to the creators of Zoom: if it ain’t broke…
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christian.guyton@futurenet.com (Christian Guyton)
