“Skype’s consumer service was shut down by its parent company Microsoft…Though President Donald Trump’s overzealous antitrust enforcers think popular platforms with large user bases imbue firms with incontestable market power, the rise and fall of Skype contradicts this theory. Federal trustbusters should keep this case in mind before deeming Big Tech companies monopolies, breaking them up, and decreasing American innovation, growth, and dynamism.
Skype launched in 2003 and had 150 million monthly users by the time of its acquisition in 2011. Microsoft bought the internet calling service for $12 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars in May 2011, which the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) approved in June of that year. Salvatore Cantale, a professor of finance at INSEAD, a global business school, explained in 2013 that Microsoft paid “roughly ten times Skype’s revenues in 2010 [and] around twice its recent valuation.””
“Considering the network effects—which Reason’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown explains as the advantages that accrue to tech platforms that already have a strong user base—experienced by telecommunications services, many would predict that this dramatic increase in demand would increase Skype’s market share as new users flocked to the most-used videoconferencing platform. But the opposite happened: In 2021, Skype’s market share fell to a measly 6 percent while Zoom’s skyrocketed to nearly 50 percent. Skype’s market share recovered only seven percentage points by 2024 and was discontinued by Microsoft, which transitioned accounts to Microsoft Teams, an application that facilitates workplace communication and collaboration.”
https://reason.com/2025/05/07/skypes-shutdown-proves-bigger-isnt-always-better/
After WWII, the other manufacturing centers of the world were rebuilding from the war, leaving the U.S. as a manufacturing superpower. Post-war Americans had pent up demand and bought lots of goods. This allowed U.S. manufacturing to flourish. Later, those countries rebuilt and third world countries developed manufacturing. Allowing low-value manufacturing to be done in places like China allowed the U.S. to invest the money made into high-value things. Now, manufacturing is highly automated, so if low-value manufacturing returned, it would make everything more expensive and not bring many jobs because manufacturing doesn’t require many laborers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxu37dqVR90
Anti-fertility terrorism.
Also, guy go crazy.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/18/suspect-identified-in-explosion-at-california-fertility-clinic-00356306
The global south’s response to Russia’s invasion has been disappointing because it is not just a European issue. The invasion violates the global norm that you don’t change borders by force.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BlVVXH_qpU
Many young people have an attraction toward Trump based on concerns about immigration, prices, and perceiving him as a badass. Some support an openly pro-Hitler MMA fighter who has said that before Hitler got on Meth he was a good guy who just wanted to get the Jews who were ruining his country out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePbMNq8m7Jw
“The court emphasized that the men — whom the Trump administration has labeled “alien enemies” — are entitled to more due process than the administration has so far provided. That means advance notice of their deportations and a meaningful opportunity to challenge the deportations in court, the justices wrote in an unsigned opinion.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/16/supreme-court-extends-block-trump-deportations-00355210
“When a Guatemalan man sued the Trump administration in March for deporting him to Mexico despite a fear of persecution, immigration officials had a response: The man told them himself he was not afraid to be sent there.
But in a late Friday court filing, the administration acknowledged that this claim — a key plank of the government’s response to a high-stakes class action lawsuit — was based on erroneous information.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/16/trump-administration-another-error-high-profile-deportation-00355377
Trump administration terminates nearly 600 Voice of America employees
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/16/voa-layoffs-trump-administration-00353694
“U.S. Cyber Command paused offensive operations aimed at Russia for a day earlier this year as a negotiating tactic, House Armed Services Committee cyber subcommittee Chair Don Bacon (R-Neb.) confirmed Friday.”
…
“While Bacon did not elaborate on the negotiations, the pause likely happened around the time Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was visiting the White House to negotiate a minerals deal with President Donald Trump — a deal that fell through after a contentious Oval Office meeting.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/16/hegseth-cyber-operations-russia-pause-00354072
“what followed was a master class in presidential deal-making of the most direct kind. Brzezinski and his colleagues often complained that Carter read too much. One of the president’s internal nicknames was “grammarian-in-chief.” But by the end of the improbably successful 13-day Camp David peace talks that September, they realized that Carter’s obsessive reading in this case had been indispensable. His knowledge of every topographical quirk, and geographic line, in the disputed Sinai desert, was critical to the marathon process that resulted in the first ever Arab recognition of Israel’s right to exist. The Camp David accords didn’t fix the Middle East, but they set the template for every attempt to forge a lasting peace ever since.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/05/17/trump-carter-mideast-peace-deal-00354432