It wasn’t that they destroyed it, it was more that they let it bit rot. Skype was honestly never a great user experience by today’s standards. The audio was bad, the connection was very unstable over mobile networks, and push notifications for calls was hit or miss. Microsoft acquired it, slapped a Microsoft login screen on it and then basically didn’t do anything to improve it. Meanwhile, Google created and killed seventy different video calling apps, which all worked better than Skype, and Apple stuck the landing with FaceTime.
Actually, they didn’t just let Skype rot, they changed a bunch of things on it for the worse IMO. Skype used to be peer to peer (I believe the name is literally supposed to be a combination of “sky” and “peer to peer”), MS took that away to funnel it all through Azure. They redesigned the UI multiple times trying to follow the trend of whatever new app became popular (one was clearly trying the be a knockoff Snapchat). They forced all users to create Microsoft accounts to keep using Skype.
Not all their changes were bad, they did finally make a Linux client, which after many years became stable enough to use.
Microsoft acquired Skype, did not create it. Then destryed it with its own hands.
It wasn’t that they destroyed it, it was more that they let it bit rot. Skype was honestly never a great user experience by today’s standards. The audio was bad, the connection was very unstable over mobile networks, and push notifications for calls was hit or miss. Microsoft acquired it, slapped a Microsoft login screen on it and then basically didn’t do anything to improve it. Meanwhile, Google created and killed seventy different video calling apps, which all worked better than Skype, and Apple stuck the landing with FaceTime.
Actually, they didn’t just let Skype rot, they changed a bunch of things on it for the worse IMO. Skype used to be peer to peer (I believe the name is literally supposed to be a combination of “sky” and “peer to peer”), MS took that away to funnel it all through Azure. They redesigned the UI multiple times trying to follow the trend of whatever new app became popular (one was clearly trying the be a knockoff Snapchat). They forced all users to create Microsoft accounts to keep using Skype.
Not all their changes were bad, they did finally make a Linux client, which after many years became stable enough to use.
They acquired practically everything they have. They haven’t created anything truly new since the mid-90s.