But is this really Microsoft's fault? Not directly, I guess ... but is it really plausible that Microsoft didn't have any underhanded influence on Nokia's board to put an obvious Microsoft stooge/idiot in charge of destroying the company?
Originally, Skype was a P2P communications platform, even for calls. After Microsoft acquired it, it was pushed into a centralized model. This goes against some fundamental concepts of how the internet is supposed to work, and the main benefits are mostly for Microsoft and not necessarily for users. Data acquisition of random call monitoring (for "quality"), government snooping (PRISM), and to integrate Skype into things like Xbox.
We should be moving more in the direction of federated protocols, but instead we are moving towards more and more centralization in tech and as well as in our society. This also has security implications with data consolidation, data sharing, etc.
I used to pay them for a monthly subscription so that I could use skype phone hardware to maintain a -sort of- VOIP variant and be easy to reach, even while on the road. About two years ago, all of my phone hardware started to fail. Those phones are now collecting dust and I replaced them with proper VOIP hardware. Yes I should have done that before, but skype DID work great for this in the past.
If somebody calls me now on that line and my computer is off or suspended, I will never know as the call does not get registered. Besides that I might have turned down the volume on my computer for whatever reason and still miss the call.
Then there's the electron muckup which is really bad, removed a bunch of features and configuration options, is super laggy and uses a lot of resources.
Also the move from P2P to using microsoft servers is not exactly a security improvement.
Skype is a mess and I'm glad I moved away from it for any serious usage.
This was all around 2010 and after. Not in the 90s. So Nokia is just shorthand for how clueless they were in this space.
Nokia was on the path to obsolescence before Microsoft purchased the failing company. Nokia lost more than $3 billion dollars in 2012. You don't spend billions of dollars to purchase a failing company and then intentionally fail some more. Skype works the same as it always has for me and I pay them nothing. Are you upset that Skype hasn't moved forward at all? That seems like a valid criticism but hardly "evil".
The stuff they did in the 90's was true evil. They actively sabotaged competitive technology and companies. Making agreements in bad faith was part of their corporate culture. They considered open source a cancer they were trying to snuff out.