Social media network is a complicated place. As useful as it can be, it can create good relationships and also bad ones. One of the example is Facebook with Microsoft Skype.
Microsoft and Facebook were good partners. With both telling the world how good their relationship were, the two companies worked together to make a video calling in Facebook Messenger.
"[Then-Microsoft CEO] Steve [Ballmer] and I are really aligned on this," said Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg at that time.
When Facebook was at its early days, Microsoft was one of the companies who actively supported it. It even made investments on Facebook. However, with the launch of video calling in Facebook Messenger for Android and iPhone, Facebook is breaking up with Skype.
Although Facebook is dumping Skype quietly, people have sniffed their troubled relationship back in 2013 when Facebook introduced a voice calling feature using its own technology. But the real moment of truth happened when Facebook stopped using Skype for video calls from desktop by replacing Skype with the technology Facebook developed on its own.
And as of the end of April 2015, the ability to message Facebook friends from within the Skype desktop app was also disabled.
Facebook confirmed this with Business Insider.
The change that made Facebook use its own technology beside using Microsoft was that Skype-powered video calls required its users to install browser plugins. While Facebook has successfully developed its own technology that negate browser plugin, it also allowed Facebook to be able to make changes and upgrades more quickly.
Using its own technology sure benefits Facebook.
For users, Facebook's technology that powers its video-calling feature is rendered invisible to users. But to Microsoft, the broken partnership is the beginning of an end.
The demise of the Skype partnership is the second major example of Facebook breaking down partnership with Microsoft recently. In December 2014, Facebook stopped using Microsoft Bing to provide web search results on its social network.
"We never like it when features have to go away like this," wrote Skype's Community Manager Claudius Henrichs in a post to the official Skype forums. Skype users will be able to use their Facebook account to find friends who have a Skype account, but it's not the same.
Microsoft and Facebook have a long history together. In 2007, Microsoft invested $240 million in the soon the be social giant network.
Now that Facebook is a tech behemoth in its own right, it's carrying its own name and developed its own attitude. It no longer needs to rely on others for technology such as search and voice calling. And keeping things in-house gives Facebook more control.
With Facebook growing at a pace that is somehow unreachable to most tech companies, it wants to keep all its user base at home, not anywhere else.
And that is another step to end an 8 year old partnership.
