Microsoft.
Sometimes a product winds up in late-stage enshittification before its sector is fully developed. Just as the thing it does is beginning to fully explode, it begins to aggressively harvest its brand value. They miss the big wave, and everyone asks what happened. That’s one disadvantage in moving early. You also hit enshittification early.
WARNING: Contains very loud swearing right from the start.
Answer: Microsoft bought it.
My opinion is that Skype was killed by the smartphone. I used Skype from probably 2003-ish to 2008 as my only source of a home phone number to interact with people who had a phone number, as I did not have or want a cell phone or a landline. After that, I got a cell phone that people could call me on, replacing my need for skype a s aphone number source, and then various video chat and voice calling apps came along completely replacing the functionality I was using Skype for. Then when Microsoft bought it, that put a very sour taste in my mouth at the time, and there was no looking back.
It was bought by microsoft, that’s what went wrong.
Microsoft is the EA of the Software world. It’s where companies and ideas go to die.
Google: “Am I a joke to you??”
Google has a bigger graveyard, but it’s mostly their stuff.
Microsoft and EA’s graveyards are full of those they acquired.
Yeah anyone who used Skype at the time immediately knew what went wrong
Microsoft
Skype felt heavy, no matter the spec of the computer it felt bloated and sluggish. I’m not trading thr article, but teams is and discord took Skype outback had their way and threw Skype in a dumpster when they were done.
Original pre-microsoft Skype was not AS bloaty. It ran on my underpowered PC at the time with no issues.
Several patches/versions/whatever after Ms gutted the p2p aspect and centralized the servers, it slowed waaaaaay the hell down.
Make of that anecdotal evidence what you will.
Cant read the article due to paywall, but, nothing “went wrong” with skype, it was and has always been utter trash. Just having your username leaked was a security breach. Skype’s only merit was it was the first easy to use video calling platform that combined text, audio and streaming in one.
Theres a reason why it was so easy to move my friends group off skype to discord right when discord launched, but I havent been able to convince that same group to move from discord.