
Why Google Does Not Own Skype - vladd
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/05/11/google.skype.wired/
======
mrshoe
I hate hate hate this kind of politicking and conspiring to team up during
meetings. Not to mention the fact that he presented an entirely dishonest
slide deck.

This is poison for any organization, and keep in mind that it can (and does)
happen in even the smallest of startups. As a leader you need to be vigilant
and stamp it out, if you want your company to be healthy.

Edit: And the way you stamp it out is to simply not promote the people who
practice it, and promote those who don't. Once it has risen to the higher
ranks I agree it is difficult to remove (although it can be done when, for
example, Steve Jobs returns to Apple and cleans house).

~~~
stcredzero
It's exactly this sort of thing that's a big part of the big company
atherosclerosis. Here, we are getting an account of how Google suffers from
it.

~~~
maxwell
Suffering? Buying Skype would've been a bad move for the company, and the
forces of rationality won out.

~~~
cgp
I'd offer that the it would have gotten Google zillions of video conferencing
clients and a leg up on implementing that into their VOIP style offering.
Instead, we're looking at Microsoft struggling to fit into an online platform
that has almost no users. Now, if they integrate more Skype functionality into
their Office suite, that could be interesting.

~~~
hessenwolf
Corporate clients wouldn't use skype just because google started using it.
They sure as hell would if Microsoft started using it, though.

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kznewman
If all this is true, I would have a problem with a co-worker who would stand
up and lie. By starting the meeting by being "super supportive" while knowing
along with co-conspirators that you were trying to kill it, a good deal of
creditability has been destroyed.

Maybe I am naive, and this is how things really get done, but regardless of
which side I might have been on during this meeting, he is no longer trusted.

~~~
S_A_P
I kind of agree here. I think it says more about Googles culture not being all
that different from any other big company. This article insinuates to me that
politics are more important than sound ideas that are good for the business.
If the skype deal was bad because it would need a large overhaul, why not just
lay out a convincing case to that effect?

~~~
maxwell
I think you're confusing politics with persuasion. Technical people have a
problem with persuasion; I did, before I joined a large company, decided I
wanted to actually change things for the better, and realized there's nothing
dishonest about convincing people that someone will improve their
company/lives. I was just bad at it.

Technical people seem to lay out arguments that are sound, but just aren't
convincing or appropriate for the audience at hand. This is why shitty
technology can win out when the customer lacks the time to make an informed
decision, and makes the perfectly rational decision to go with the more
convincing pitch.

And that's just it: decision makers don't have time to go through a thorough,
completely objective, scientific argument. So, you either do what you need to
get things done in what you feel is the right way, or you don't. There's
nothing wrong with hacking a meeting, so long as the hack benefits the
company, or at least is done in the company's best interest. As with software,
the only bad hacks are those that benefit the hacker at the expense of the
organization.

~~~
abecedarius
People rationalize why what's good for them and their allies is the common
good. (A person who believes they don't, well, that's evidence against them
more than it's evidence in their favor.)

I agree with your first two paragraphs.

~~~
maxwell
It's a problem if one puts their own interests first; it's not to convince
oneself and one's allies to do what's in the common good.

------
ChuckMcM
Wow, thanks for that link.

If anyone ever wants to know why I don't work at Google any more and why I
would decline their offer if they asked me to come back, I would point to this
example.

If you thrive in that kind of environment where you "plant hand grenades so
you can de-rail the deal" by all means go there. I don't. Every place in
Google I looked at had this sort of culture.

------
unwind
So ... If "cloud computing" is the new paradigm that Google works in, and
that's why they should avoid the old "peer to peer" paradigm that Skype is
using, where does that leave "client/server"?

I had serious problems making sense of that. I guess they mean that since
Skype is peer to peer, that leaves too few places for Google's server-oriented
infrastructure to inject advertisements?

~~~
delinka
"Cloud" is the new "client/server." The "cloud" is the server and an app
(browser, specialized app, w/e) on your computer (desktop, smartphone, w/e) is
the client.

It's just that the server part is now [theoretically] a bunch of servers in
different locations [theoretically] to allow failover. Theoretically.

And yes, I'm almost certain that's Google's problem with the Skype model: no
convenient place to stick ads. (OK, sure, the client app could just get ads
from Google, but if the p2p voice protocol works w/o Google servers, you can
write a client that avoids the ads.)

~~~
bad_user
You can't create an alternative Skype client.

Protocol is closed and little progress has been made for reverse-engineering
-- which I think would also be illegal, since the data is encrypted and then
you're at odds with the DMCA (IANAL btw -- the DMCA grants a safe harbor for
reverse engineering, but that hasn't worked out so well for DRM).

To my knowledge there is no alternative Skype client, not even for the IM part
-- Pidgin has integration with the official Skype client and piggybacks on top
of it. If you don't have the Skype client installed and running, Pidgin
doesn't work.

P2P in this particular case is really not the freedom-giver technology that
allows you to workaround Skype's servers. If Skype wishes to serve adds to
you, or to track you, there's really not much you can do about it.

~~~
huetsch
I hacked on Pidgin a while back and people talked about the Skype plugin a
bit. From my understanding, the issue is that the Skype code is very
obfuscated and reverse engineering the protocol would be very difficult -
apparently, no one with the ability and time to do that has stepped up thus
far.

~~~
ldite
This is a fascinating analysis of Skype from a few years back:

<http://recon.cx/en/f/vskype-part1.pdf>

<http://recon.cx/en/f/vskype-part2.pdf>

Looking at how complex it is, and considering that Skype probably have more
obfuscation and crypto ready to roll out if anyone cracks it, I can see why
nobody's implemented a compatible client:

~~~
stcredzero
Security by obscurity works, if you're willing to respond with resources, and
the economics do not motivate an overwhelming horde of opponents. There are
definite _economic_ reasons why Skype can make it work with just software and
Sony can't even with help in hardware.

------
prewett
This article makes me a bit worried about Google. It reminds me of emperors
and sultans (e.g. Sergei and Page) manipulated by their courtiers (e.g. Chan).

~~~
dstein
My tinfoil hat theory is that Google is attempting to be the router for all of
humanity's computation and communication.

~~~
lurker19
That is basically Google's mission statement as laid out in their IPO docs :
to organize all the world's information. We wrongly thought that was just a
fancy phrase for webcrawling.

~~~
dstein
But the strategies they are using now are a lot more sinister than they
initially seemed. They're not just organizing links to data, they actually
want be a sort of universal turing machine. They don't want any two people to
communicate with eachother without going through a Google server. Between
language translation, Google Talk, Chrome laptops, Gmail... they're not even
being coy about it anymore.

------
joshaidan
"Peer-to-peer just eats up your bandwidth, right, it's like the old
technology."

This quote intrigues me the most. Is peer-to-peer really bad, and uses a lot
of bandwidth, or is it just bad for Google?

~~~
delinka
That's just spin to make the architecture sound like a bad idea. Yes, p2p
anything uses more of your _upload_ bandwidth than any other means of
communicating on the 'net. IMO, that's not "bad" because it keeps the tubes
all decentralized and more capable of routing around damage. Like it's
_supposed_ to do.

~~~
tincholio
Nope, it's not about that. Skype can, if you're not running behind a NAT, make
you a supernode, and in that case you will be routing calls between NAT'ed
hosts "on your dime". Basically, it may be that you contribute your bandwidth
to calls that have nothing to do with you. Presumably this isn't the case in
the "cloud based" service, where the some server would act as a gateway
between NAT'ed hosts.

~~~
joshaidan
Does Skype actually route voice traffic through a supernode? I thought it was
just routing TCP/UDP requests to open up ports behind a NAT'd router. As well,
supernodes may also be handling some authentication traffic. But I'm not 100%
familiar with Skype's protocol.

~~~
iki23
Yes, supernodes are used to negotiate the communication trough NATs, the
method's called UDP hole punching:
[http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&q=skype+n...](http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&q=skype+nat+udp+hole+punching)

------
meterplech
I think a side-lesson from this article is how difficult
acquisitions/enterprise sales are in general. When you are working with a huge
organization like Google you really need to identify the few key people in
favor of your deal and who are trying to scuttle it. I think Chan was perhaps
right for Google to not buy Skype, but it's a good lesson when you are trying
to get Google to buy your startup. Or even if you are trying to get a big
company to license your technology or be a customer. Find your benefactors and
detractors and manage both to win deals you want.

~~~
tokenadult
_When you are working with a huge organization like Google you really need to
identify the few key people in favor of your deal and who are trying to
scuttle it._

More generally, this is known in economics as the agency problem of the firm.
(I Googled for some handy references, but I'll let readers who are interested
seek out the references that best fit their own background, as I wasn't
completely satisfied with any of the links I found.) Employees of companies
are naturally looking out for their own individual interests, as well as (the
company's shareholders hope) the higher good of the company. Setting up
company policies to provide incentives for shareholder-value-maximizing
decisions is not easy, especially when many of those decisions involve
predictions of an uncertain future, in which outcomes for individuals may
differ from the outcome for the company.

------
kragen
Holy shit, Google may not Be Evil, but Wesley Chan surely is:

"As Chan helped with due diligence, even going to Europe to see Skype
firsthand, he became convinced that the purchase was a bad idea for Google. He
concluded that one of Skype's key assets -- its peer-to-peer technology -- was
a mismatch for Google, which worked on the newer paradigm of cloud computing.

"'The worst thing about peer-to-peer is that it doesn't work well with
Google,' Chan told me during an amazing interview for 'In the Plex' in
February 2010. 'Peer-to-peer just eats up your bandwidth, right, it's like the
old technology.'"

~~~
Apocryphon
See, I don't get that. Perhaps his tactics were rather quiet, but he's just an
employee who sees a possible acquisition as a dangerously expensive mismatch.
All this shows is that he did his homework and worked hard to make sure it
wouldn't happen. What's evil about that?

------
yalogin
I absolutely do not understand what he means by p2p using more bandwidth. I
think he is lying. Google will not get the thing it most covets - data. So it
cannot sell ads on skype as all data will be shuttled through peer systems
instead of Google servers.

~~~
Hipchan
p2p uses more bandwidth in a multi-user scenario. Don't think that's an
invalid point.

~~~
yalogin
I doubt that actually. Done right the bandwidth used should be less than in a
client-server model. The idea is that the peers talk to each other directly
and the data does not have to go all the way to the server and back. But I
guess I was trying to say that he is not stating the real reason behind the
decision.

~~~
exception
Also, in a corporate setting, if you make a call to a buddy in your building,
chances are the data will be routed on your own private routers and never even
hit the ISP. I'd say that was a big plus for P2P.

------
benologist
Because a classy employee sabotaged the deal because Skype is P2P and
therefore would require a complete rewrite.

What an odd article.

------
jellicle
Wesley Chan sounds like someone who needs to be fired immediately, if not
sooner.

------
gabriele
I believe that very little of the MS/Skype deal is about the technology behind
Skype. With 8.5 billions Microsoft could have developed the same technology or
even a better technology, and it's very likely that they will completely
change it in the future to better integrate Skype with their other products.
The real value of Skype is in its user base and the significant number of
companies that use Skype as a valuable business resource. That is potentially
a much more profitable user base than that of Live Messenger and the two
products together now represent a large majority in the entire instant
messaging marketplace.

------
zaidf
I wish Google bought Skype just so I could find and search archives of my
conversations in my gmail. It is incredibly hard to believe how skype survives
without online chat log archiving. I find it almost essential for business-
related work.

------
moo
The poor Linux Skype UI is looking better now as it might not even exist in
the future.

------
trustfundbaby
I'm not convinced ... I still think Skype would have been the missing piece of
the puzzle for google voice, that would have taken it from where it is now
(nice-to-have) to a must-have/must-use like youtube is today.

But that's just me.

------
cygwin98
That's a good read. The best way to prevent a wrong purchase is not to
purchase it. I admire Chan's courage and slyness to sabotage that deal, he
must have saved Google a few billions of dollars: Google has enormous data
centers, and capable teams, lots of loyal Gmail users, there's nothing that
would benefit Google by buying Skype. Those reasons also hold for Microsoft. I
feel sorry for Microsoft as they just burnt a few billions for no gains ---
that enormous amount of money should have been spent to hire talents and put
into R&D.

~~~
dspillett
It depends what immediate plans they have. If they want skype-like voice/video
features for integration in some product(s) _soon_ it may make more sense to
buy in the already working tech and just add what is needed for the
integration. Designing, building and testing their own code and infrastructure
could be cheaper in the long run but would take _far_ longer than just buying
in the code, talent and infrastructure that Skype already has.

Also the MS brand does not command immediate trust in many, so convincing
users to use an MS product over something else is not as easy as it once was.
As well as the code, people and infrastructure they've got the brand, a name
that a lot of the general public already "trust" as they already use a product
carrying that brand.

~~~
bad_user
According to Microsoft, Windows Live Messenger has ~ 300 million active users.

That may be less than Skype (I don't know), but Skype is mostly redundant tech
for them.

This was definitely a brand purchase - and such purchases may be worth it, but
I can't think of a single product that Microsoft bought and that doesn't
scream "Microsoft" all over -- so whatever trust in Skype consumers have,
those consumers that don't trust Microsoft will probably leave Skype at some
point.

------
cybernytrix
"this is the dumbest piece of shit"... I've read in a long time! All the p2p
FUD is just that. In TV like Skype the data path is still p2p. only call setup
is server based.

~~~
tincholio
That's the case only when the clients are not NAT'ed. When they are, Skype
uses supernodes (other clients who are not NAT'ed and have good connections).
Other technologies have different names for this, but basically need a 3rd
party with public interfaces (e.g. in SIP applications, you often have media
relay servers).

~~~
cybernytrix
I meant "GV" not TV. The NAT case only applies when both the clients are
behind NAT, otherwise you do not need a relay node. Also there seems to be a
way to avoid a relay even if both are behind a NAT. Read the paper,
"Autonomous NAT Traversal", joint work with Christian Grothoff, Nathan S.
Evans, and Andreas Müller published by IEEE at the IEEE P2P'10 Conference
(bib, pdf) <http://samy.pl/pwnat/>

~~~
tincholio
I've actually read that paper some time ago, but I have not seen any
implementation using that technique in the wild. In any case, double NATs are
a very common situation, sadly.

------
qq66
Reminds me of how Humphrey would operate in "Yes Minister."

------
stcredzero
Google has the Gizmo7 technology. If Microsoft starts making Skype really
suck, Google is in a good position to jump in with the solution. The problem
is, if Microsoft does things right.

~~~
th
Gizmo5: <http://www.google.com/gizmo5/>

~~~
stcredzero
Whoops, wrong single digit prime number.

------
netpenthe
how many people use Skype just for the IM? I find it vastly superior to all
other chat clients....

------
klbarry
Does Chan have his own PR company? This article couldn't have done a better
job promoting this "brilliant product manager" (articles words).

~~~
gyardley
It's a classic 'you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours' situation. Steve Levy
wants to make his 'In The Plex' book worth buying, Wes Chan presumably wants
some positive exposure - so Wes Chan gives Steve Levy interesting information
for the book that also happens to make him look good.

I doubt this sort of trade-off even has to be voiced - it's just implicitly
understood. Although in this case, I think the anecdote backfired - Chan seems
really smart, but also somewhat manipulative.

------
balac
> "I even had a [PowerPoint] deck that was super supportive of it," he said.

I sincerely hope that it wasn't PowerPoint...

