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Comment by _7acn | Hacker News Reader

During his tenure, Windows 8 was released... Just as W8, the server version also lacked the START button, which was particularly noticeable when working through RDP. Also, the whole "Metro" design was a disaster. I also remember the acquisition of Skype for an astronomical amount. Where is Skype now? Indeed, an underrated CEO...

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Skype is now the backbone of O365 and what evolved into Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Phone System, and Microsoft Team Room Systems. It's literally gobbling up the market as we speak, forcing long time AV vendors to have to build distinctly Microsoft products. Poly, Logitech, Crestron, all massive players in the space, have to bow to Microsoft's requirements and build hardware carefully sized for Microsoft Teams Room interfaces. They are basically removing almost all the software from these companies and making them only hardware, they will eventually produce the hardware themselves as well.

No, the backbone is Microsoft Office Communicator, which was rebranded to Lync, then Skype for Business, and finally embedded in Teams. The Skype consumer product, which they acquired, has very little to do with any of this.

> Where is Skype now?

A good chunk of Teams’ backend is built on top of Skype. Not sure about the present day, but just a few years ago, you could see tons of references to Skype in the Teams’ codebase.

Still can, Skype was rebranded into a more successful product, but the backend has ton of legacy Skype work inside it still.

There is zero Skype legacy in Teams. Skype P2P model was rewritten after acquisition to enable spying.

I worked with the source code directly a few years ago. The grandparent comment confirms that what I saw back then is still the case today (assuming they have access to the source code in the present day).

With that in mind, where does such confidence on your end come from?

Was the 'few years ago' 2012? Skype was rewritten less than a year after acquisition https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-...

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