Don't Skype Me: How Microsoft Turned Consumers Against a Beloved Brand - Bloomberg

Probably not a great ROI on Microsoft's $8.5B Skype acquisition, but perhaps better than average for Steve Ballmer's big bets... In other inadvertent gifts to Facebook, see Millennials really hated Snapchat’s redesign (Recode)

"The company hasn’t updated the number of Skype users since 2016, when it put the total at 300 million. Some analysts suspect the numbers are flat at best, and two former employees describe a general sense of panic that they’re actually falling. The ex-Microsofters, who requested anonymity to discuss confidential statistics, say that as late as 2017 they never heard a figure higher than 300 million discussed internally.

Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella has repeatedly said he wants the company’s products to be widely used and loved. By turning Skype into a key part of its lucrative Office suite for corporate customers, Microsoft is threatening what made it appealing to regular folks in the first place. “It is like Tim Tebow trying to be a baseball player,” Malik says. “The product is so confusing, kludgey and unusable.”"

Don't Skype Me: How Microsoft Turned Consumers Against a Beloved Brand - Bloomberg