“Voice Over IP(VoIP) and chat service Skype has crashed throughout the world and continues to crash on login, leading many to suspect that its recent acquisition by Microsoft is a definite disaster,” Dean Wilson reports for The Inquirer.
“The service began to crash around 12:15pm UK time, kicking people offline and freezing when they tried to log back in again. Other users who remained online had difficulties making calls. Restarting your PC or reinstalling Skype has no effect, as the problem is clearly on Skype’s end,” Wilson reports. “It’s just over two weeks since Microsoft bought Skype for $8.5bn, much to the dismay of many of its users. While it’s unlikely that Microsoft would make any deliberate changes that would cause instability in its new VoIP subsidiary, the seemingly coincidental timing of this massive outage has led to rampant speculation about what it could be up to.”
Wilson reports, “A number of people instantly began slating Microsoft over the crash, suggesting that it was working on things behind the scenes to make the service as crash-prone as Windows itself.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We’re sure that Microsoft is working hard to bring Skype in line with the company’s standards of quality and reliability.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Did Microsoft blow $8.5 billion on the wrong Skype? – May 16, 2011
How long does Steve Ballmer have left as Microsoft CEO? – May 13, 2011
8.5 billion reasons to fire Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer – May 11, 2011
Ballmer: Microsoft won’t drop Skype support for Mac, iOS – May 10, 2011
Microsoft’s Ballmer reportedly tricked into overbidding for Skype by $4.5 billion – May 10, 2011
Microsoft + Skype = $8.5 billion thrown into a bonfire – May 10, 2011
Microsoft buys Skype for $8.5 billion; company’s largest-ever acquisition – May 10, 2011
When the acquisition was first announced, I did say, if it ain’t broken, turn it over to Microsoft and wait a few days. Sounds like it took a couple of weeks. They must be losing their touch.
They have the “Midas touch” in that everything they touch turns instantly or eventually into shite. Ballmer never should have gone beyond his Peter Principle used car salesman level of abilities.
PP: Yep!
As far up as used car salesman you say? 😉
I’ve used skype since 2007.
I thought the same oh no MSFT bought it, tis the start of the end.
Mine has been crashing too and when not crashing the sound and video are rubbish.
Me too … and the amazing thing to me is that many people I talk to say Skype sound quality is crap since the 26 May crash and *yet Skype really doesn’t seem to be acknowledging it*. Bizarre.
CNBC just had an analyst on who stated that it would be better for the stock if Ballmer would step down. I think that’s the first time I’ve heard it stated so baldly on a major financial channel.
Quick, somebody “disappear” that analyst. (we’ve got more in the cupboard anyway).
“Steve Ballmer, for as long as it takes.”
I don’t believe in “disappearing” people, but I like the gist of your argument.
I agree, we need to start a “Keep Ballmer” campaign right away.
I resent anyone calling for Ballmer’s head to roll. He is the best thing since sliced bread.
Resent away…
‘baldly’ as in bald-head-Ballmer? Or boldly?
Baldly \Bald”ly\, adv.
Nakedly; without reserve; inelegantly.
David Einhorn, a hugely influential hedge fund manager yesterday called for Ballmer’s ouster. I’m afraid msft stockholders are started to notice what we’ve known here for decades: the man’s level of competence does not rise past that of a local auto dealer salesman. Okay, I’ll give him sales manager, but he knows nothing about technology and nothing about running a large corporation in a competitive environment.
When the board finally does to him what he does to chairs, expect them to contact every significant Apple exec and offer to quadruple their salary to take his place.
Einhorn didn’t mince words in that statement, either. The momentum is growing to oust Ballmer. Perhaps it’s time to invest in Microsoft.. Well, maybe not. Windows revenues are declining and the rest of the business is so fragmented it borders on schizophrenia.
And Ballmer recently cashed in stock to the tune of a billion or so, IIRC.
They said the same thing on FOX BUSINESS months ago. Ballmer has never been a technology visionary and that’s what the company needs badly right now.
Still, blaming Microsoft for this crash is silly at best. They haven’t touched Skype. Yet.
Microshaft. A colostomy back of abject suck from day one.
widespread acceptance ubiquity divided by user base = ineptitude.
√
Prior to the crash, if I turned on Skype without being online, it would start to go through its screens and then say it couldn’t connect. Now it crashes on start even when offline. That means that some change has happened in my Skype client.
That is interesting to this non-technical computer user. Any ideas from the more knowledgeable? Has my Skype programmed been corrupted?
Don’t know.
I’m still using the old version of Skype (2.7.0.330) and mine is working fine.
I went back to that version when I discovered that I didn’t have call history in the same convenient way in the new version. Sometimes progress isn’t everything it claims to be.
Yeah, Skype 2.8 still works too. And I too greatly prefer its interface over the new one.
I’m using 2.8.0 it has become dismal.
I tried 5.0 and no better with that.
Sorry, I’ve no help to offer.
old guy with a beard try deleting-trashing the shared.xml file.
•Quit Skype.
Open a Finder window go to-
Users/ (your)Home/~Library/ Application Support/Skype/ shared.xml
Assistant “Mr. Ballmer, your company’s purchase of the Mona Lisa is now finalized. Now, I assume you want this to be kept under wraps, perhaps in your private safe—”
Ballmer “No way! Let’s see it…” Steve licked the KFC off his fingers, and approached the package “Right now! Let’s go… I didn’t buy it to stick it in Fort Knox”
Assistant “Are you sure thats….. Oh ok.. Absolutely” …..*Assistant delicately unwraps the priceless piece.
Ballmer “Now I gotta ask you to leave—I need some time alone with this baby.”
As the Assistant closed the door behind him, he remained just outside the door for a few moments, and heard very clearly, the sound of his boss groaning and.. almost certainly defacating quite violently on Leonardo’s most famous masterpiece.
“And, what do you call yourself, Mr. Ballmer?”
“The Aristocrat!”
Are people nuts? This deal needs to be approved before it’s consummated. Microsoft sucks, but let’s be fair here, Skype can suck without Microsoft’s help.
I agree with you that it’s pretty much impossible for this to be Microsoft’s fault.
But that’s almost immaterial at this point. Microsoft’s reputation is so poor that most people *expect* this kind of thing to be Microsoft’s fault, even when there’s no way it could have been.
So in that sense, Microsoft has nobody to blame but themselves for earning such a poor reputation. It’s going to take a loooooong time (and most likely a change in leadership) before the average person stops expecting Microsoft to screw up like this.
I’ve told Ballmer this a million times but he won’t listen to me. Don’t put the Skype mainframe server in the back of your garage. He’s gone and backed his Escalade into it, the clumsy bugger.
If only there were another service that could be used with a NEW billion dollar server farm to work as a hub handling the video calls. Maybe Apple could do it and call their service iChat or FaceTime and they could build a solid OS, internet service and small hand help devices to use it. Someone should suggest it to Apple.
Ballmer turned his Skype on… the Servers decided it was the right time to pull the plug.
in all honesty though.. has this deal even been finalized?
I highly doubt MS has the reins of Skype yet. hell, i bet money has not even changed hands yet.
I wondered if this could be sabotage by hackers displeased with the MS takeover.
Went to Time Machine, restored the older, better version (2.8.0.851) and it’s working like a charm! Good to know what the issue was.
Yeah, you shouldn’t even be using the latest version of Skype. It blows chunks and its a UI nightmare. Stick with 2.x.
Link here for anyone who’s interested. And I love how the page says “Improve your Skype experience with this version of Skype for Mac.”
Whatever microslut touchs turns to dust.
biggest, fastest face-plant EVER
We can look forward to the blue screen of chat from now on..
Balmer “Before we finalize this purchase I need to know that we can crash the whole thing!”
Skype “The whole thing? Well I guess so…”
Balmer “….”
Skype “Ah, OK here goes”
Balmer “Great”
For anyone having this problem with Skype today, Skype has announced a fix:
Mac World has it here:
http://www.macworld.com/article/160110/2011/05/skype_instructions_fix_mac_connectivity.html
It fixed mine.
Remember when MS purchased Danger, and soon after Sidekick users experienced a huge data loss? At the time, I read an article that explained that whenever Microsoft acquires a technology stack, they immediately set about converting the elements of that stack to Microsoft technology (called “dogfooding”). At MS, the engineers of the acquired company are usually eliminated or ignored during this process.
In the case of Danger, I believe that their servers were running Sun Solaris/Linux/Oracle. The effort to convert those servers to Microsoft server technology without input from the engineers that built the stack was cited as the cause of that snafu.
The article also went on to point out that Microsoft had similar difficult experiences dogfooding acquisitions of WebTV and Hotmail.
Article here: http://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/09/10/12/microsofts_sidekick_pink_problems_blamed_on_dogfooding_and_sabotage.html
Yup, this is almost certainly what’s going on. I remember every incident you mention. It would be hilarious if it weren’t so tragic. Oh wait… it is hilarious! Everything Microsoft touches turns to shit.
“Coincidence? I think not.”
“MacDailyNews Take: We’re sure that Microsoft is working hard to bring Skype in line with the company’s standards of quality and reliability.” LOL!!! That is so funny. Good luck with that microsoft. NOT!
It takes extra R&D money to figure out how to screw up a working product. Not everyone can do that you know.
Suddenly, a wild SkypeVOIP appears.
Microsoft uses SteveSnorlax.
It’s super effective! SkypeVOIP disabled!
I’m guessing some of their key technical people quit when the acquisition decision became final, and now, they don’t have the expertise or experience to maintain and trouble-shoot the system over the longer term. So, it is ultimately Microsoft’s fault, even if they did not make specific changes to the system (yet).
[quote]Wilson reports, “A number of people instantly began slating Microsoft over the crash…[/quote]
WTF is “slating” anyway? I tried googling it and got nothing but things relating to slate the material and people slated to appear somewhere.
Get used to it, Skypers. I deleted that shit the moment the buyout was announced.
“suggesting that it was working on things behind the scenes to make the service as crash-prone as Windows itself.”
Uh, no. Skype won’t be part of Microsoft until the sale is completed, which may take a couple months. IOW: This is just another reason to laugh at Microsoft over-paying a few $Billion$ for $kype.
BTW: Skype’s recent problems, (GUI decay, security holes, network crash), indicate that their original coding team jumped ship, either replaced by bumblers or by competent coders who have no previous code documentation from which to work (all too typical even now, sad sad sad).
ann right on and of course Microsoft will mess it up and I’m so tired of seeing these giants acting like big babies and we suffer and we paid! GET ALONG BECOME universal or FIX SOMETHING, there rant over.
“Restarting your PC or reinstalling Skype has no effect”
See! The first thing Windoze users suspect is their flaky cheap-ass PC.
“Can you hear me now?”
Restart
“Can you hear me now?”
Restart
“Can you hear me now?”
Restart
BSOD
Restart