I’m between ISPs right now. One has been turned off, the new one is to be installed next week. In the mean time, I can get online through my phone, or I can talk, but I haven’t yet figured out how to do both.
So yesterday, to be able to talk and be online at the same time, I went to install Skype, because I remembered I had an account I hadn’t used in several years. But when I did, it tried to force me to merge my Skype account with my Microsoft Outlook.com account. No way. I want nothing to do with a Microsoft Outlook.com account. I had only been forced to even create an Outlook.com account a few months ago when I bought my Windows 8 computer from my son. You cannot run Windows 8 without an Outlook.com account, which I think is pretty sucky anyway. This attempt to force me to merge Skype with Outlook startled me pretty badly, because I didn’t know, or had forgotten, that Microsoft had bought Skype. So I searched up the story, and sure enough found this 2 year old Forbes article, which had been written well before the NSA / Google listening scandal broke, when we were all still innocent naive babes.
Forbes 7/22/2012
It’s Terrifying And Sickening That Microsoft Can Now Listen In On All My Skype Calls
Really creepy. Fuhgettaboutit. I went to the Windows Control Panel / Programs & Features to uninstall the Skype, but couldn’t find anything called Skype. What I did find was that the only thing I had actually installed that day, was the Google-Talk-Plugin. Not Skype at all!
(Whuuuuuhh?) Did they think we wouldn’t notice?
The connection between Google & the NSA and perpetual recording of all is now common knowledge thanks to Eric Snowden, but now we find a smoking gun for a trifecta with Microsoft too? I am sufficiently spooked. The author of the article above was wondering why Microsoft had spent so much money on the Skype brand. Why indeed? Microsoft already had the basic technology, in fact had been one of the first VOIP providers back in the day with NetMeeting, which I do remember had a bit of an awkward interface, so it had been an easy switch for me to go to Skype, as it probably for a lot of people. But rather than compete with a nicer user interface, a new sexy name, and force its installation with Windows, it appeared Microsoft was eating crow and over-paying just for the Skype name. Very weird. Bill Gates might be a megalomaniac with ideations of world domination, but he’s not stupid in business with a habit of overpaying for something. Why would he spend it if it weren’t for some unstated reason? Where did that kind of money, $8+ billion to force the deal, come from?
Perhaps it wasn’t Microsoft’s money at all. What’s bigger than Microsoft? Why, Uncle Sam, of course. But I don’t think Microsoft would take charity from Uncle Sam. Instead, I think Microsoft was a shill buyer for the NSA. The government is good at shill buying. (Think Fast & Furious.) Uncle Sam’s S.O.P. NSA pulling the strings, and merging the Google-Talk’s bugging technology with Skype, under the hood, where you’re not supposed to notice. Everybody would have scattered like pigeons had they known the government was Skype’s real buyer. I sure did yesterday. I ripped the Skype with it’s Google-Talk/NSA engine out by its roots.
