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Skype was founded 2003, wholly bought by eBay in 2005. MS bought it from eBay in 2011, when Skype had 30m users, which was and is tiny compared to relevant mark
by SideQuark 2y ago
Skype was founded 2003, wholly bought by eBay in 2005. MS bought it from eBay in 2011, when Skype had 30m users, which was and is tiny compared to relevant markets for videoconferencing. Even now Teams has around 30% of the market. In the 14 years since the purchase MS increased Skype usage significantly and brought the tech to a vastly bigger audience.
So no, there was never a monopoly, the market share was vastly too low to “price fix an entire market,” and “the hug of death” certainly doesn’t mean making a product better and more used and only shuttering it after 14 years when it’s been vastly outclassed (Skype usage sits at around 1%, and Zoom completely slaughtered it). Most tech fails much quicker.