Skype goes ad-free, which is unusual for Microsoft Microsoft has announced an ad-free update for Skype, now headed to testers in the company's Insider program. However, this update is unlikely to appease users who are still missing features previously dropped from the once-premier chat app. In the announcement for Skype 8.125.76.201, Microsoft enthused: "We're excited to …
Since yesterday (?) Skype on my phone decided I'm suspicious. It sent a slew of notifications on my (now supposedly unverified) email address (for the record, account dating from the early times accounts still had numbers, not names). And even after I confirmed I'm indeed myself, it still doesn't trust me to be me. Go figure. Microsoft. Jeez.
Only in specific countries (which indeed might be more important to you).
Several countries tend to use other, specific messaging apps, making them a must-have if you have to communicate with people there. China is the best known example, but there are many others, even among "western civilization" countries.
Didn't downvote you though.
The iron law of business acquisitions goes like this:
1 - Big business buys smaller business.
2 - Big business over time forces out all the people who created the smaller business.
3 - Smaller business product becomes worse because the people who cared about are gone and replaced by people who only care about profit.
4 - People stop using smaller business product.
Skype was once great; not anymore. LinkedIn was once great; not anymore.
We have both Skype and Teams on our intranet. Each has its diehard supporters who villify the opposite corner and neither can achieve the critical mass to kill the other off. Many of us villify both, and stick firmly to email and the water cooler.
Still, if you can charge the same punter for two identical bags of shite, why kill either of them off?
Seems only people still using skype are largely international, and it's probably more hassle than worth to try to keep up with locally relevant advertisements, particularly with EU cracking down on that whole exploitation of human rights thing. Besides, if you're using skype, you're using windows, so they'll just feed you the ad to your desktop anyways!
Skype is also available for phones, MacOS and Linux, so to say if you are using Skype you are using Windows is quite inaccurate. I personally used to use it on Linux to video call my family overseas. But I switched to using Google Meet as the audio quality was terrible on Skype and was fine on the same laptop with other apps.
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