Was that the quote from 2011 the day the buyout took place to hype up the $8.5 billion dollar purchase price they paid?
Indeed and I find it amazing how few companies have actually seriously attempted to compete with Skype. Behind Skype's growth is not even a too sophisticated (de)serialization algorithm, and yet I would say Skype's quality of internet calls still stands out from the rest.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/16/11682704/whatsapp-video-calls-feature-testing The beginning of the end for Skype.
Why? Because they offer video calling? many do that. Skype is above the rest because it's so good when it comes to calling phones, it has saved me in a couple of situations where a fixed/mobile called would've cost me a small fortune or had service problems. For business dealings, you still need to sometimes use "old-school" phones.
A business software company buying the only business (and like the second largest) social media company. If they didn't, eventually Google or FB would.
Nope. It simply comes down to size of the userbase. WhatsApp has 1.1bn whereas Skype has 300m. WhatsApp is growing whereas Skype is stagnating. WhatsApp has the entire Skype feature set clearly in their sights. They've already delivered voice calls. Video calls is next. Interfacing with the fixed line networks will surely follow. They are a juggernaut and Facebook has stated they bought WhatsApp to take on Microsoft in this arena. Tell you what. I'll stick a reminder in my phone to revisit this thread in 2 years time. If WhatsApp haven't taken huge chunks out of Skype I'll eat humble pie.
LinkedIn is the biggest spam-a-thon I've ever seen. I can't stand that site. Maybe MSFT can do something constructive with it.