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> it worked so badly. Skype has a much worse quality now after the switch for all people I know who used Skype at the time. The real reason for switching was
by zx8080 3y ago
> it worked so badly.
Skype has a much worse quality now after the switch for all people I know who used Skype at the time.
The real reason for switching was iPhone. First, Apple did not allow long-running apps in favour of centralized notifications. Periodically start Skype to check events did not help recwicing calls. Second, users moved to smartphones, which depleted the active nodes network. So there has been an increase of short-lived nodes without balanced increase in long-lived. So to prevent the p2p network model to start failing, Skype moved to a centralized one. And probably the government regulations (to store and decrypt messages) took place, but this was probably not very public.
- imglorp 3y agoMicrosoft buying Skype must have added additional incentives to centralize. Regulatory, organizational control, auditing, etc. And tinfoil take would include surveiling.
- timschmidt 3y agohttp://www.h-online.com/security/features/Skype-s-ominous-link-checking-Facts-and-speculation-1865629.html http://www.h-online.com/security/features/Skype-s-ominous-li...
- j45 3y agoSkype was P2P pre-acquisition. Microsoft’s acquisition changed Skype to centralize it through their servers (and introduce all sorts of call quality issues). It’s less about focusing on tinfoil and more about how creating $ for cloud usage allowed for centralization and surveillance. Skype has been enough of a turn off from the performance issues it has / had hat many people moved elsewhere.
- DennisP 3y agoIn the early 2000s there was a lot of discussion about a US law that required phone providers to provide for wiretapping, with no mention of the underlying tech. Being P2P, that wouldn't work for Skype, so a journalist asked the Skype CEO whether they would comply with the law and he said "We're not US company. Why would we?" So I don't think it's all that tinfoily to think that once Skype became a US company, the government might have pressured them into making wiretaps possible, since there was a specific law that arguably required it. Considering all that Snowden revealed later, I'm not sure I'd put any digital surveillance in the tinfoil category.
- habibur 3y agoMicrosoft at that time said they are moving Skype to centralized server from distributed to reduce code complexity.