More Details On Skype's Big Move To The Web
Earlier today we broke the news that Skype was ramping up in preparation for new web-based products — a big shift for the company, which has historically offered its extremely popular service via native desktop clients.
Context & Ripple Effects
Skype has spent 2010 widening its surface area while staying anchored to native desktop software: an Android app distributed via skype.com/m arrived in October, alongside a Windows release adding Facebook integration and group video calling. The web push TechCrunch broke on December 4 extends that pattern to its most radical conclusion yet — a company built on downloaded clients preparing browser-based products.
The move lands amid organizational churn: chief development officer Madhu Yarlagadda left in August 2010 after barely a month, ahead of an offering the company had been expected to pursue (though reporting on that offering's specifics remained unconfirmed at the time), and Skype spent the summer under security-agency scrutiny in India alongside Google. As far back as two 2007 deals covered by GigaOM, Skype's reach into workplace communication was the story investors told about it — a web product is the next chapter of that pitch.
First-order effects
- Browser-based calling removes the install step from Skype's funnel, letting casual or locked-down-office users reach its network without downloading the desktop client that has been the company's primary distribution vehicle since launch.
Second-order effects
- A browser client puts Skype in closer proximity to Google, its fellow target of India's 2010 security crackdown, and intensifies the question regulators raised then: who controls and can inspect a communications session when it runs inside someone else's web page rather than a local application?
Third-order effects
- If web delivery works, Skype stops being valued purely as a client-software vendor and starts looking like a cloud communications platform — a reframing that matters directly for the offering the company was widely reported to be preparing, and for any acquirer weighing the network against the codebase.
The trend: Consumer communications companies are migrating from installed desktop clients to browser-delivered services, turning distribution from a download funnel into a URL.