Alright, first of all let's remember that the NSA added Skype to the PRISM program before Microsoft even bought it.
Secondly, there were very real technical reasons why Microsoft rearchitected the Skype backend. They needed to do this in order to make Skype compatible with new generation of devices. This has been posted on HN before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5930600
I'm not disputing that the changes allow for easier eavesdropping (I honestly don't know enough technical details to have an opinion either way). However, I do think that it's rather meaningless since Skype was already in the PRISM program prior to the changes, and that the people behind the architectural changes probably had absolutely no idea about the PRISM program in the first place and were simply doing it in order to make Skype a better product on mobile devices.
That was a load of bullshit made-up excuses back then and it still is now. Call traffic does not need to go through Microsoft servers. Making it go P2P even in the presence of NAT/firewalls at both ends is a problem solved several years ago. You have to make a conscious decision not to support that and the reason will not be a technical one.
> You have to make a conscious decision not to support that
To emphasize - Skype had that solved years ago, to the point that e.g. back in the day in my university, they announced at some point that Skype is banned (because it was a bandwidth hog - the uni had a bad connection) but they were unable to enforce that at the firewall because their firewall couldn't tell if it was a skype connection or not.
Skype was built by the people who previously made Kazaa, the most efficient P2P app at the time. There was VOIP software before Skype, but non worked as well -- and it wasn't the Skype voice codec that made it work well (although SILK when introduced later did wonders for quality, and SVOPC was not bad) - it was the P2P architecture that provided excellent connectivity, that other VOIP apps at the time did not have.
Furthermore, Google did not purchase Skype BECAUSE it was P2P/distributed, which goes against the spirit of every Google service.
Secondly, there were very real technical reasons why Microsoft rearchitected the Skype backend. They needed to do this in order to make Skype compatible with new generation of devices. This has been posted on HN before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5930600
I'm not disputing that the changes allow for easier eavesdropping (I honestly don't know enough technical details to have an opinion either way). However, I do think that it's rather meaningless since Skype was already in the PRISM program prior to the changes, and that the people behind the architectural changes probably had absolutely no idea about the PRISM program in the first place and were simply doing it in order to make Skype a better product on mobile devices.