What blows my mind is MS fucking bought Skype and somehow Teams still can’t handle video calls correctly. The actual fuck did they do with that acquisition?
Skype used to be peer to peer. Your call went from you to your friend (whomever). Microsoft decided that they couldn’t mitm that setup to scrape data; so, soon after they acquired Skype, they made all calls go through their servers.
Then they tried to make Skype make more money, since those servers aren’t free. Then they made teams and copied half the code into that, and cludged the rest to make it hold together.
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.
So Teams calls of 1-4 people can send traffic direct peer-to-peer if they’re on the same LAN right?
Do all calls of 5+ users stay centrally hosted on the cloud?
These are the kinds of things that MS should document and make easily available for IT and firewall admins. Finding info on Teams ports wasn’t easy in my experience.
You’re way outside my scope of knowledge - I know a bit about the decisions they took 10 years, and not very much on what is happening today. I would imagine some of these limits are configurable and dynamic. I really don’t know.
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!
I’ve been using teams for 3 or 4 years before the pandemic… So maybe around 2015? I gotta Google check that. But then before it was called teams it was called Skype. I recall the thing had a shitty transition to becoming teams.
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?
How the fuck did they let motherfucking Zoom take over. The video-call equivalent of “Googling” something was to “Skype.” When Covid hit, Microsoft screwed the pooch horribly.
My sister is super high ranking at Microsoft, and when she calls the family, she uses Zoom.
Well, I’m a unix guy for 30 years and hated M$ bill gates blablabla and forced to use windows at work etc. Teams was somewhat bad at the beginning, especially start of covid pandemic , I’m using Teams multiple times daily for ~5 years now. But since ~1 year it handles video call pretty nicely, 20+ feeds, share screens, whiteboard, etc. it’s pretty stable at least, don’t crash anymore, and we can have multiple accounts. It took times to reach this state I agree…
In the past two years, I have had horrible issues where it decides that I’m not allowed to join the call because I have a Teams account logged into a different organization, that it won’t let me log out of. An issue where Microsoft servers just time out if you have ipv6 enabled, etc.
Don’t get me started on Skype for Business. It’s still around.
Oh yeah, that multiple organizations things absolutely fuuuucks me since I’m adjunct at multiple universities/colleges. It keeps trying to default me to a place I don’t even work at anymore and somehow still refuses to let me leave it without reinstalling Windows (which I won’t do as I’ll be moving to Linux full time once I do).
The core of what made Skype great was made by a team of engineers in Estonia. Once it got acquired most of those people left the company. Many of them ended up at Twilio.
What blows my mind is MS fucking bought Skype and somehow Teams still can’t handle video calls correctly. The actual fuck did they do with that acquisition?
Skype used to be peer to peer. Your call went from you to your friend (whomever). Microsoft decided that they couldn’t mitm that setup to scrape data; so, soon after they acquired Skype, they made all calls go through their servers.
Then they tried to make Skype make more money, since those servers aren’t free. Then they made teams and copied half the code into that, and cludged the rest to make it hold together.
In mean aside from the fact that almost all of that story is completely wrong, it’s a good story.
Source: Used to work at Microsoft and worked a lot with people from the Skype team.
What is the real story?
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.
So Teams calls of 1-4 people can send traffic direct peer-to-peer if they’re on the same LAN right?
Do all calls of 5+ users stay centrally hosted on the cloud? These are the kinds of things that MS should document and make easily available for IT and firewall admins. Finding info on Teams ports wasn’t easy in my experience.
You’re way outside my scope of knowledge - I know a bit about the decisions they took 10 years, and not very much on what is happening today. I would imagine some of these limits are configurable and dynamic. I really don’t know.
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!
…
When do you think teams came out?
I’ve been using teams for 3 or 4 years before the pandemic… So maybe around 2015? I gotta Google check that. But then before it was called teams it was called Skype. I recall the thing had a shitty transition to becoming teams.
Looks like the transition was around 2016 from Skype to teams but Skype has been around since 2003.
You should write a post sometime about what you know from the internals of Skype. I would read it.
Skype is fading fast. Thank God. Discord is already an internet standard.
Replacing garbage with sewer water. Not exactly an improvement.
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?
How the fuck did they let motherfucking Zoom take over. The video-call equivalent of “Googling” something was to “Skype.” When Covid hit, Microsoft screwed the pooch horribly.
My sister is super high ranking at Microsoft, and when she calls the family, she uses Zoom.
I don’t see “screwed the pooch” used much but it always is funny to me.
Well, I’m a unix guy for 30 years and hated M$ bill gates blablabla and forced to use windows at work etc. Teams was somewhat bad at the beginning, especially start of covid pandemic , I’m using Teams multiple times daily for ~5 years now. But since ~1 year it handles video call pretty nicely, 20+ feeds, share screens, whiteboard, etc. it’s pretty stable at least, don’t crash anymore, and we can have multiple accounts. It took times to reach this state I agree…
In the past two years, I have had horrible issues where it decides that I’m not allowed to join the call because I have a Teams account logged into a different organization, that it won’t let me log out of. An issue where Microsoft servers just time out if you have ipv6 enabled, etc.
Don’t get me started on Skype for Business. It’s still around.
Oh yeah, that multiple organizations things absolutely fuuuucks me since I’m adjunct at multiple universities/colleges. It keeps trying to default me to a place I don’t even work at anymore and somehow still refuses to let me leave it without reinstalling Windows (which I won’t do as I’ll be moving to Linux full time once I do).
Teams are losing parts of text chat conversations for me. Not sure if that’s issue of their PWA on Linux or just an issue in general…
PWA in Linux is unusable yep, with FF or Edge, super buggy.
I’m using Teams in Windows, I have a software KVM to move between my Linux PC and work windows laptop
I always say that the only reason they keep Skype alive is to make Teams appear good
The core of what made Skype great was made by a team of engineers in Estonia. Once it got acquired most of those people left the company. Many of them ended up at Twilio.