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Comment by lucb1e | Hacker News Reader

> * Is now owned by Microsoft

This is not negative in itself. I don't like that it's part of a bigger company because of privacy and focus from intelligence agencies and hackers, but that's just me. I could imagine someone else thinking it's positive because it shows professionalism.

Why is this a negative point for you? And why would something like Hangouts be better, or what would you suggest if you wanted to eliminate big companies' products?

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History. MS past is plenty reason to avoid skype.

Why? Management changes, engineers change, everything changes. Saying "No" just because it's Microsoft is incredibly short-sighted.

And even if it were so: the product as it is today was mostly developed while it wasn't even under Microsoft.

No, it isn't short-sighted. On the contrary it is a matter of letting Microsoft earn their trust again at a reasonable pace after almost two decades of systematic abuse. The Halloween documents where published 1998 and it is only the last year or so since they've begun dipping their toes in open source waters. They've thoroughly earned their shame.

Besides, even if everyone at Microsoft has changed attitude that's no excuse. Microsoft has had five years since the acquisition of Skype in 2011. Isn't it, by now, time to stop blaming their predecessors and own up to the current state of affairs?

It's not only that the attitudes have changed. What percentage of the people working there in 1998 are still working there?

by itself, not a big deal. But in Skype's case, the number of issues I had with the application had increased since Microsoft took over. A lot.

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