One of the many reasons it’s bad to have enormous companies acquiring every smaller company is that the incentive to care just kind of goes away.

If you’re running a single business, YOUR business, then you have a lot of interest in making it work as well as you possibly can.

But when a business becomes just one line item of some huge conglomerate, it becomes trivial for the higher ups to ignore it, or dump it.

And that’s IF they ever actually wanted it to work at all.

Such seems to be the case with Microsoft and Skype, as outlined by TikTok user @philrosennn:

“Microsoft is shutting down Skype, but the real story isn’t that this platform failed. Skype was the greatest missed opportunity in tech history. Think about it. Skype had everything.”

“In 2003, it was the platform for free internet calls, and by 2011 it had 300 million users.”

“It was so dominant that Microsoft paid 8.5 billion to acquire it. And yet, in an era when video calls became essential, Skype disappeared.”

“Imagine if Microsoft had done with Skype what Meta did with WhatsApp. What if Skype had evolved into the go-to messaging app? Compete with imessage, WhatsApp, and Zoom? Or what if it powered social media video calls before Instagram and TikTok made them mainstream?”

“Instead, Microsoft let Skype stagnate and shifted its focus to teams. And today it’s pulling the plug. I don’t think Skype was just another tech casualty. It was the missed opportunity of a generation. Could have been WhatsApp, it could have been Zoom. It could have been discord. Instead, it became a footnote.”

“Maybe Microsoft never acquired Skype to make it great, but to make sure that no one else could.”

@philrosennn

Microsoft is shutting down Skype – but it actually killed Skype a long time ago #skype #microsoft #tech #investing

♬ original sound – Phil

Is it a anti-Midas touch?

Just bad timing?

Of course, this was probably the plan all along.

And some say the plan went great.

Still, there’s no doubt an opportunity was missed. It’s hard to remember now, but heading into the pandemic, “Skype” was still the default verb for video calling.

The fact that it/Teams fumbled a lead that bad and got eclipsed by Zoom in short order shows that they were at least not paying much attention.

Sadly, a tremendous amount of start-ups these days aren’t even really aiming for longevity, they’re just aiming to be enough of a threat/neat idea to be acquired and disposed of by some giant.

That’s just sort of how American business works now. Not exactly in the spirit of healthy competition, is it?

If you liked that story, check out this one about a 72-year-old woman was told by her life insurance company that her policy was worthless because she’d paid for 40 years. 🙁