Skype made the call negotiation go through a central server (as does all systems nowadays). Skype was originally built on Kazaa technology to punch through firewalls without a central coordinator and that’s what Microsoft removed. They didn’t remove it to track the calling but to enable larger group calls on weaker devices which required video mixing on a central system rather than peer to peer call (where weaker peers couldn’t decode that many video streams). Calls up to 4 are still routed peer to peer if the backend can find routes through all firewalls.

Very very little of Skype was in the new Teams if anything. Teams was a rewrap of Communicator calling tech and was a response to Slack. The real time chatting had nothing to do with Skype either.

Skype lingered in Microsoft for a couple of reasons; Microsoft was crap at acquiring businesses back then, thinking that a hands off approach was best. It meant Skype never really became a proper Microsoft team - they still felt and acted like Skype employees and they didn’t manage to affect Redmond very well. Being acquired is super hard especially when almost all of the bigger business was in a different time zone and a different culture.

I was at a leadership development workshop with a tonne of Skype leaders about 10 years ago. They were still feeling incredibly frustrated and not understanding what was expected of them. It was a botched acquisition and the fault was on both sides.

They probably used Chat-GPT which at the time…

Ok Mr Chat I need to rewrite the Skype code to look more like what we have been doing at Microsoft…

Oh my! It keeps crashing my PC, can you do a little less crash and more icons and shit?

Oh, it crashed my PC once more. How about this time no crash?

Dude, I said no crash! But nice graphics! Can you make the people icons at least 25% of the total screen real estate? And can you also hide the full screen icon into at least half an hour of clicks? Yeah make it real hidden!

Fantastic work on the full screen thing! Could you not make it like anything Microsoft has made before up to the point where it can actually run?

Good job at sending all my information to random strangers! Many points for that! And the icons! Soo big and beautiful! Thanks Chat-GPT! Bill! We’re ready to release!

And at least garbage let you make international calls with the money you put into it. Nitro-saturated sewer water gives you what—a bit of extra bandwidth utilization, 2 free tokens to prove you’re above the poverty line, and discounts on paid cosmetics?