One thing I wonder about tech' like this, is that it is encrypted from you to the service, but there is no assurance of privacy.
Someone who runs a service like this can easy drop in on your calls and ease-drop. Which is a legitimate concern if someone wanted to use this either in a corporate environment or for very private calling (e.g. husband and wife, doctor and patient, etc).
No current video tech' really offers much in the way of assured privacy. Skype used to but it has been largely rolled back since Microsoft took over.
My understanding is that it's possible to not have a 'service' and instead form connections from one person directly to another. That decentralization would be a privacy boon.
Well, without knowing the details of how they think two computers can reliably form a secure link without foreknowledge of each other, this doesn't exactly sound bullet proof. Self signed certs or something similar can only go so far. Hell, CA verified certs don't exactly go as far as most should be comfortable with.
Unfortunately, no: both browsers need to exchange volatile information to establish the connection. It includes information like how to traverse NATs to get to the other browser. You need some more centralized service to exchange that information and bootstrap the process.
As others have pointed out, the data doesn't go through a central service, but is actually p2p. The only thing a central service would be required for is establishing the connections so that the browsers can find each other on the internet.
One thing I wonder about tech' like this, is that it is encrypted from you to the service, but there is no assurance of privacy.
Someone who runs a service like this can easy drop in on your calls and ease-drop. Which is a legitimate concern if someone wanted to use this either in a corporate environment or for very private calling (e.g. husband and wife, doctor and patient, etc).
No current video tech' really offers much in the way of assured privacy. Skype used to but it has been largely rolled back since Microsoft took over.