I would venture a guess of some business model like renaming the free version of Skype to "Windows Communicator Home Basic" with an upgrade available to Pro for $99. Or something.

You'd rather have all your personal information that you put through Skype go to advertising companies instead?

Ha, more like:

You'd rather give your personal information to a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_adCenter than one you've already given it to?

I hope the voice chat remains free..it's the only way I can talk to my girlfriend reliably =/.

Well, I guess it's time for a new piece of software to replace skype as the go-to cross-platform voice/video chat software.

I suppose this might give a boost to whatever open source efforts are kicking around, and if that does happen it will increase with every decrease in functionality that Skype suffers. I'd still prefer Skype to remain good on all the platforms it currently supports, though.

EDIT: And this provides a pretty damn good environment for Google's offering to be rolled out worldwide.

I love how people treat this as the end of the world.

As long as it stays free, I don't care who Skype belongs to.

My family uses ooVoo as the alternative to Skype. The only video chats I use are MSN and qik for my mobile.

It isn't the end of the world... just the end of Skype as we know it.

If Microsoft were a foster parent, it would lose the kids and go to jail pretty much immediately if anyone reported how malnourished and mistreated it's 'children' are .

Well there goes the one freeware software that families and friends can use to call each other for free. Theyll start charging for it and I'm guessing itll die.

Last time I checked, it was Facebook doing back door deals with personal information and we all know Google's view on the internet and privacy, a quote that you've pulled out many times I'd like to add.

As far as I'm concerned in this situation, Microsoft is the far lesser of the three evils.

Will you guys SHUT UP?!?! you're gonna give 'em ideas.. not cool man :stare:

:teehee:

My brain has exploded at the truth to this :blink:


Ah well, at least the world's ending next year :disco:

Because for people like me who has someone living in Europe, who can't really [censored] call me by paid methods because of financial circumstances, yes this is the end of the world.

So, why cant you still use it? Has anything changed yet?

Think someone else mentioned there's Ventrilo.

Gonna end up phasing out Skype. Pretty sure just about everyone I talk to on Skype I also have on Facebook so it won't hurt much for me to change.

R.I.P Skype.

Try it, you might like it. :icecream:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/microsoft/8505544/Microsoft-says-Skype-will-have-more-adverts.html

*Sees it now*

Person one: Hey, let's video chat

Person two: 'kay

*when starting the video chat session a 30 second ad for HeadOn plays*

Peron one and two in unison: Uhg, that was horrible

*5 minutes later in the middle of their chat, an advert for ShamWow plays*

This is the way Skype ends. Not with a bang, but a bunch of annoying commercials

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=207740:


Oh, yes. Because nothing makes your userbase happier than adware forcing you to watch an ad before you can use the program.

Seriously, if they use any such takeover/screen grabbing ad, that's noxious and worse than a lot of adware.