Microsoft Retiring Messenger, Replacing It With Skype

Entropy98 writes "Windows Live Messenger will be shut down by March 2013, after nearly 13 years of service, so Microsoft can focus its efforts on Skype, its recent $8.5bn acquisition. No word on whether users will be able to transfer their WLM accounts to Skype. 'According to internet analysis firm Comscore, WLM still had more than double the number of Skype's instant messenger facility at the start of this year and was second only in popularity to Yahoo Messenger. But the report suggested WLM's US audience had fallen to 8.3 million unique users, representing a 48% drop year-on-year. By contrast, the number of people using Skype to instant message each other grew over the period.'"

Windows Live Messenger Integration

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm... Skype 6.0 already began integrating WLM and Skype accounts. See http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/24/3547644/skype-6-0-mac-windows-release

Re:No thanks.

[icebike]

If I'm going to go with one big evil super corporation with ties to government agencies and concerns about privacy and yadda yadda, I might as well use the one I've used for years that is between free and super cheap and way less bloated -- Google Voice.

Google Voice is a internet based Answering Machine. It does not support Video.

Google Talk is a slightly proprietary Jabber (XMPP) client that includes Voice and Video streams on some devices.

Neither is exactly like Skype.

Re:Windows Live Messenger Integration

[humanrev]

Turn the ads off then. There's an option in the Skype settings to do so (think it's around Notifications somewhere). Old versions just expose you to security vulnerability that are fixed in newer versions, not to mention older protocols and lower quality codecs.

Re:ICQ

[asdf7890]

Here in the UK msn messenger (or whatever MS is calling it this month) seems to be the dominant IM network

I'm only one data-point, but a lot of people I know directly or indirectly seem to have switched away from MS's IM. It usually starts with using Facebook's IM for contacts that are on there then slowly logging into MSN/Live/what-ever less and less often until they don't bother at all (and reverting to mobile phone text messages for communicating with people who are not on facebook).

Re:"Maybe" on accounts, but "yes" on contacts

[shutdown -p now]

"Yes" on accounts as well, as anyone who installed Skype v6 (or the earlier betas) can attest - the very first thing it does is suggest that you input your WLM / MS account info so that it can link the two. If you do, it doesn't just migrates contacts - from there on it effectively operates as WLM client, letting you chat with those people who still use WLM (or any third-party client using the same protocol), and letting them send messages to your WLM address which you then see as Skype chats. Furthermore, it lets you log in using your MS account rather than Skype username. And if you don't have a Skype account at all, you can just log in with MS account, and then that becomes your Skype username.

So the more accurate description is that services are transparently merged, and WLM client is retired in favor of Skype client.

Re:Microsoft's recent shocking displas of sense.

[shutdown -p now]

Apparent abandonment of .net - Not a supported framework for metro, winphone, winRT.

.NET is a supported framework [microsoft.com] for Win8/WinRT, as well as [msdn.com] all incarnations of Windows Phone (in fact, for WP, you have to use it for UI layer).

Silverlight is not gone, really, it just got rewritten in native code and rebranded "XAML" (for Windows Store apps).