Counting chickens before they've been conceived

Posted Jun 1, 2011 10:51 UTC (Wed) by epa (subscriber, #39769)
In reply to: Counting chickens before they've been conceived by tialaramex
Parent article: Google open-sources WebRTC

If you can just tell them to go to a web page to make a video call, then the established base of Skype or any other network becomes largely irrelevant. So we need the microphone, camera, and digital signal processing accessible from Javascript.

Counting chickens before they've been conceived

Posted Jun 1, 2011 11:29 UTC (Wed) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] (5 responses)

"I need to call Mom"
"Here's a web page"
"OK, how do I call Mom?"
"She needs to go to the web page too"
"Um, and how will she know to do that?"
"Call her?"
"That's what I'm trying to do!"

Counting chickens before they've been conceived

Posted Jun 1, 2011 11:57 UTC (Wed) by rvfh (guest, #31018) [Link]

> "Call her?"

Send her an e-mail, a SMS, a facebook message...

Counting chickens before they've been conceived

Posted Jun 1, 2011 22:36 UTC (Wed) by jmalcolm (subscriber, #8876) [Link] (2 responses)

< Call her?

I think that what people forget is the the unifying network is the plain old telephone system. There are far more people on that than on any VOIP network. I can call out to a phone number (DID) from any network (my SIP provider say) and it can route back to wherever callee likes (like Skype perhaps).

As long as the telephone system stays substantially larger than these competing networks, it is still anybody's game.

Counting chickens before they've been conceived

Posted Jun 6, 2011 18:48 UTC (Mon) by eean (subscriber, #50420) [Link] (1 responses)

Which is actually what Skype excels at. For $30/year I have a Skype-in US number and can make unlimited US calls. There are SIP providers that do the same thing, but Skype is #1 for consumers.

Not that I think Microsoft spent its money well. Since it's a platform developer its a conflict-of-interest for Microsoft to own Skype. This immediately devalues Skype since other companies won't want to play ball. And Skype is hardly a monopoly so other companies don't have to.

Counting chickens before they've been conceived

Posted Jun 6, 2011 18:57 UTC (Mon) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

skype didn't work with anyone else anyway, so why do you think it makes a difference?

Counting chickens before they've been conceived

Posted Jun 3, 2011 20:09 UTC (Fri) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link]

The vast majority of Skype calls I've ever been on were pre-scheduled meetings. Just saying.