Disagreed.

Skype used to be mainstream. It was essentially a cross platform iMessage & FaceTime, almost ahead of its time. It was also efficient in terms of network usage, being peer-to-peer for the most part.

Had it continued to be usable, it would still be mainstream and might have the place of WhatsApp today. Instead, we now have this garbage Snapchat-like UI, a server-based model that doesn't even work (it was supposed to "fix" the P2P model, but for me it's been way worse than P2P which always worked), and a shitty Electron client that melts your battery and looks awful (they killed a gorgeous - especially on Mac - native client to replace it with this shit).

Or google hangouts. It's skype but in the web and with an interface that actually works.

Hangouts is a great example of another horrible UI. The whole tie in to Chrome made it unusable for anyone non technical (where did it go? What did you want me to click? I am in the call, but you're not there... oh you're in another call? How do you hangup? I don't see the window anymore, etc.)

A standalone app would fix this, but there seems to be some strange internal agenda tying it to Chrome... Chromebooks I guess?

Minus a few gigs of ram

Yup, all these came after Skype started sucking, most probably because of it.