Upstate New Yorkers complain bitterly about the "Lake Effect" – a combination of wind, rain, snow, sleet and Arctic temperatures that blow in off Lake Erie.
Skype users are now complaining about the "Microsoft Effect" – an ill wind that has blown no good for the popular Internet calling service ever since it was announced that Microsoft was putting up $8.5 billion to
buy the company.
There is the expected stream of crass comments to the effect that Microsoft has not even closed on the deal and already Skype is screwed up.
The latest gust of bad news came early Tuesday when Skype experienced a significant outage, leaving millions of its 170 million users unable to sign in or make calls. Those who were already signed in got cryptic messages saying there was "a problem."
On its blog, Skype says things should return to normal "soon."
“If you were disconnected from Skype earlier, you shouldn’t need to manually sign back in to Skype — it should reconnect automatically when it’s able to do so. We apologise for the disruption to your conversations,” Skype blogger Peter Parkes said.
Ongoing recovery
Skype says the problem has stabilized and that recovery is "ongoing" although at midday Thursday, ConsumerAffairs.com was still unable to access Skype.
On computers running Microsoft Windows 7, an error message said the program was having "problems." On Linux Ubuntu 11.04, we were able to run the program but calls weren't going through. And no, we don't have any Macs, although there may be a few concealed iPods here and there.
It's the second outage in a month. On May 26, Skype released an update to its Windows version to fix what it called a "corruption." A Mac update went out the next day.
Besides the outages, a Russian hacker claims to have reverse-engineered Skype's protocol and has posted his results on the Web.
None of this is likely to sit too well in Redmond. After all, $8.5 billion is real money and it's also the largest acquisition Microsoft has ever made.
CEO Steve Ballmer has waxed rhapsodic about the deal, saying it will "create the future of real-time communications so people can easily stay connected to family, friends, clients and colleagues anywhere in the world.”
Maybe so, but not if the outages continue and not if the protocol is widely distributed on the Web for every hacker to mess with.
Skype is currently a standalone program that lets users hold voice and video conferences at very low cost and, in many cases, for free. Microsoft is expected to integrate Skype into its desktop Office programs, its Outlook mail programs, its Xbox 360 and just about everything else it produces, which could be a boon to most of us. Of course, it's been said that no one knows you're a dog on the Internet, so that may change.
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