Back in January, Microsoft announced that it would be retiring its long-time Messenger service and replacing it with recently-acquired Skype on March 15th. However, users can now expect that the big change won’t even get started until April 8th.
On Friday, Microsoft announced that the migration will begin with countries that have English-based populations, and it will end with those that speak “Brazilian Portuguese” on April 30th. Users must switch to Skype without an option to decline.
Since users from each service will now merge, the acquisition will provide incentives for both companies.
With the millions of users between both Microsoft and Skype, it is understood that both companies’ user-bases will benefit. Skype also accounts for one-third of the world’s phone traffic, thus bringing even more value to the software giant.
Microsoft acquired Skype in January after much speculation. The transaction for the acquisition cost an estimated $6 billion.
This was one part of Microsoft’s transition to the rebranding of its products. For instance, Hotmail users must eventually use Outlook.com.
It was originally going to take you two months to get ready for the big shift to Skype, but appears that’s going to change! Of course, that doesn’t exactly matter – the migration from Messenger to Skype is imminent. That’s why we have a few questions for you:
Why do you think Microsoft has delayed the transition from Messenger to Skype? Do you use one piece of software over the other? Do you prefer to have choices for your communication software? Do you believe that the transition from Messenger to Skype will fail or succeed?
Source: TheNextWeb
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I absolutely hate skype transition…So far Ive had a bad time with Skype with the huge memory issues, compared to the low memory process messenger had.
Big issue is will it be pushed out again? Microsoft are notorious for their delays.
Once messenger is gone, so am I… No interest whatsoever in being force fed skype.
Skype is very slow and buggy (tends to crash) on my Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit desktop computer.
MSN’s interface was better, I did not like Skype’s interface so far. However Skype’s big plus is video call quality. It’s great on my limited internet bandwidth, even in full screen.
Skype is great! better than MSN!
Honestly, Skype has nothing to offer to me in comparison to online resources. When this goes through, I will switch to online services that combine multiple of these clients(Such as imo messenger).
Here’s the main reasons:
1. MSN handles image previews much better than any other client. I often take screenshots of things I’m seeing and MSN makes my life a LOT easier than Skype, which asks us to download every single file. Some of my friends just say no ‘because it’s not their computer’.
2. Skype isn’t available in all countries. This isn’t necessarily their fault. A friend of mine lives in Oman and the government has said that Microsoft needs to gain an license from them, before they can introduce their VOIP client in Oman.
It may not be Microsoft’s fault, but it makes “both companies’ user-bases will benefit.” a complete lie. Choice is always better.
3. Like I said, it doesn’t have anything to offer which online services don’t:
- WebRTC will allow high quality and secure video calls through our browsers
- imo and other similar services combine many of the clients’ chats in one window.
What does this all mean? It means that Microsoft’s actually making their services worse, while claiming the opposite. No, it’s not good. When MSN stops, Microsoft will have lost me when it comes to chat/VOIP-services.
Didn’t know WebRTC. I hope they offer some light Chrome extension soon (my mother had to stop using skype on her laptop – a not-that-old 2GBRAM Inspiron 6400 – because it ate resources)
I’ve never used Windows Messenger, but anyway – keep going Microsoft! How about IE transition to a good browser (you name it).
I know very few people who use MSN, and I have skype open pretty much all the time anyway, so this won’t really affect me. I may actually move Skype over to Miranda and save myself a program load.
Microsoft needs to fix its own broken useless crap before it bothers aquiring and breaking anything else…
I don’t DISLIKE Skype, but I only use it if I have no choice because it EATS resources, while messenger (2009 build 14, which I still use often) is reasonably light. On the other hand, I feel that Skype offers better video/audio quality than messenger’s provided my ISP is behaving.
What I dislike is the migration. I tried to migrate to skype early while there is no hurry, but all my carefully classified messenger contacts got imported bunched together in skype, and I also lost my contacts’ custom nicknames (ie. I have “Bill from accounting” instead of his stupid “Love is in the air” or whatever). Also, the chat log format with Messenger Plus! is different from the chat log format of Messegner Plus! for Skype, making it difficult to maintain continuity.
Microsoft’s hotmail has been my preference and I’m one very unhappy person now that I’m being FORCED to use Outlook, that’s #1. Number 2 is that nothing has been clearly stated about being able to send emails via Skype, since it never had that capability, and 3, Skype’s updated versions have sucked badly, and I’ve always had to revery back to one of their earlier versions!!!
Any wonder as to why so many people are becoming fed-up with the arrogance of these corporate “expletive deleted” jerks ???????????? !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Lockhart, you give yourself too much credit in describing your writing sa slightly above mediocre. This article reads like it was written by an eight-year-old with attention deficit disorder.
I can confirm that I am not eight-years-old.
Also, as far as I know, I do not have an attention deficit disorder.
Being Skype is merged with MS, one thing is sure.
Skype also is going to be in the ocean of bugs, patches and above all instability…. like MS.
I used skype years ago, a few of our buisness units use it with overseas companies.. it’s a good service, but a lousy client. As so many have mentioned it’s a resource hog, it also cause no end of issues with resource restricted machines many of or CSR’s use. Our IT group started using messanger about two years ago due to it’s small footprint on the machines, and ease of access. We’re looking at an alternatives now.