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Comment by lawnchair_larry | Hacker News Reader

They didn’t buy Skype as a favor to the US government. You would need a truly warped understanding of business to entertain this thought.

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"Favor" is the wrong word, but only because that implies a lack of payment. Quoting from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18411779 :

> 2009 - NSA offering 'billions' for Skype eavesdrop solution [1]

> 2011 - Microsoft buys Skype for $8.5 billion. Why, exactly? [2]

> 2012 - Skype replaces P2P supernodes with Linux boxes hosted by Microsoft [3]

> 2013 - Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages Subhead: Skype worked to enable Prism collection of video calls [4]

> 1. https://www.theregister.com/2009/02/12/nsa_offers_billions_f...

> 2. https://www.wired.com/2011/05/microsoft-buys-skype-2/

> 3. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/05/skype...

> 4. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-...

None of that supports the claim that Microsoft bought skype as a favor to the US government. It’s mostly a bunch of silly conjecture. Removal of supernodes does make it easier to intercept, sure, but that doesn’t mean it was the motivation for that change, and it definitely doesn’t mean it was tied to requests by a government.

Now that they have the capability, they would have to comply with court orders, like every other communications company based in the US.

Frankly I think you're naive, unless you're getting hung up on "favor." If you expect me to believe that Microsoft would never cooperate with the American government like this, you'll have to do better than name calling.

If common sense doesn’t convince you otherwise, have fun. Their purchase had absolutely nothing to do with the US government. Business with the US government just does not work the way you seem to think it does.

Indeed, they would not cooperate “like this”, (they’ve been suing them to shield customer data, in fact) but they obviously would comply with US law.

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