Disruptive Telephony

All good things must come to an end, it seems... after 7 years of providing an end-user client that has been blissfully free of any kind of advertising, Skype has announced the beginning of advertising in the Skype client.

And for the very first time, this is one feature I am very glad is NOT yet available in the Mac client!

Here's what they say it will look like (image from Skype's blog):

Sure, in Skype's blog post, they have a whole bullet list of "details" about this new program, and do note this:

The ads won’t interrupt your Skype experience. You won’t suddenly see annoying pop-up ads or flashy banner ads in middle of conversations.

But still... we've been ad-free for 7 years of Skype usage.

I do realize that Skype is trying to add a great number of people, do an IPO, pay for their funky new office, etc. And I get that they can't necessarily pay for all that purely on the revenue from the small percentage of people who pay for actual services.

But still... we've been ad-free for 7 years of Skype usage.

And I do realize that the vast majority of users are getting the Skype service for free and so having advertising in the client should be a small price to pay for what is still a free service. (Full disclosure: I am a paying Skype customer.) And I do realize that pretty much every other desktop client in the world has some form of in-client advertising.

But still... we've been ad-free for 7 years of Skype usage.

And yes, we should probably just suck it up and accept that we've had 7 great years of no advertising inside of Skype... and that this day was bound to come.

But still... (you get the idea)

R.I.P., Advertising-free Skype!

P.S. Oh, and Skype team... believe me when I say that I will NOT whine and complain if you never bring this "feature" over to the Mac :-)

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