It was successfull for a while up to 10 years or so ago, when it was the main free option for video calling. But nowadays there are plenty of alternatives, pretty much all of which do a better job than Skype ever did.

Skype has now been pretty much obsolete for years so I don’t think it’s too bad that it’s ending.

The Google approach would have been to already have killed it in 2004 before it ever even had a chance to be successful.

Most electric cars are pretty much computers on wheels, and voltages, currents and temperature are constantly monitored. It totally should be possible to log battery health and diagnostic information and generate a battery health report for when the vehicle is sold. But standards would need to be put in place for that to force manufacturers to implement it and to make sure the results are actually meaningful.

Unfortunately Tesla’s specifically really don’t feel like they’re designed to last when looking at their materials choices and build quality (either that or my manager just bought a particularly bad sample, I have to admit it’s the only Tesla I ever been inside of) so I don’t think having a good reseller experience or longevity is really a part of their business model.

The battery is still a big problem when selling on the used market because there’s not really a way to see how much it has been abused, and it’s also not really feasible to replace. If the previous owner abused their battery by constantly fast charging, and always charging it to 100% and driving till the battery is completely empty, then the battery can decrease much faster.

My manager has recently bought a used Tesla model 3, and the battery had been abused so much that he only has about 150km of actual range on a full battery. With the advertised range being close to 500km and the car being only 5 years old that seems to be a lot more than 2% per year. Even if you assume that the effective range when new was only half of the advertised range, then that battery has lost nearly 40% of its capacity in 5 years.