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What Ever Happened to MSN Messenger?
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And for a while, there was also Skype for Business (formerly Lync (formerly Communicator)).
Yeah that was part of the brand reshuffling they did to obfuscate things. Lync was their shitty chat app they tried to convince businesses to use that everyone hated. They bought Skype, renamed it to Microsoft Teams, renamed Lync to Skype for Business, and killed MSN Messenger. When people still didn't want to use ~~Lync~~Skype for Business, then they killed that as well, and now it's just MS Teams.
Fun fact any developer working with the api can tell you, there is a clear distinction between de voip bit and the meeting/chat bit. They haven't bothered rewriting or integrating it in any way so the Skype for business backend is still very much alive.
Another fun fact: On the backend, Teams uses SharePoint to store files, and Exchange to store message. The whole M365 stack is a house of cards built on ancient tech. It's a wonder it works at all.
Lync was such garbage. I used that for years at one of my old jobs. Teams just feels like discord with extra shittiness lol.
The worst part is that they had developed an in-house app that worked amazing but abandoned it for teams.
Still remember setting up lync 2013 for our company. It was one of the funner projects I remember doing. I was not as thrilled about setting up SharePoint 2013....
For a while? Our business used it until ... this year. It's finally EOL this year.
If I remember correctly the Skype for business still identified as communicator on the about page.
The process was skype.exe, so Lync was Skype with a skin.