Hacker News Reader

Comment by Cshelton | Hacker News Reader

Well, Skype the brand was botched, but Skype is basically what powers Microsoft Teams now. Which is widely successful due to it being bundled with Microsoft 365 (also Teams is pretty decent compared to the comp).

View on HN

Skype should have been in the position that Zoom has taken over.

I believe Teams was a separate technology to begin with - not just rebranded Skype

Though they are separate products with different UIs and features, Teams, Skype consumer version, and (maybe?) Microsoft-hosted Skype for Business all run on the same communications tech stack, made by Microsoft's Intelligent Conversation and Communications Cloud division.*

Interestingly, it looks like Teams was at one point code-named "Skype Spaces" - a name which occasionally appears in Teams deep link URLs.

* see this job ad here: https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/job/834482/Site-Reliabil...

Yeah, if you look at the network requests Teams makes, many of them include 'skype' in the name. Only thing I went off to guess it is a lot of the same services.

The 'skype' name in the network requests is more a remnant of a last minute change from the internal product name (Skype Teams) than a statement of the technologies underpinning the product.

The Teams comms/meeting stack was its own thing - an evolution (or frankenstein's monster mix) of Skype for Business and Skype Consumer technologies. That is one of the reasons why Teams did not have interop capabilities with SfB at launch.

Side note: The Skype for Business communications stack is a descendent of Lync/Office Communicator was completely separate from Skype Consumer (only thing it shared was branding).

Source: worked on Teams

that would explain why skype was horrible in mobile. notification arrived late, messages coming late. thanks god Microsoft Teams is different. I hope Microsoft Teams doing its job better on mobile.

Not sure on the underlying technology, but I would bet that the Skype brand definitely helped Lync adoption (Skype for Business), and the pervasiveness of Skype for Business was key to Teams success.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com