Very interesting, I wonder why they decided to stop licensing the component to eBay. They must have had a good reason. If eBay has to shut down Skype, they may as well try their hand at something else like <a href="http://www.arpac.com">packaging equipment</a> since their users all require packaging.

Niklas Zennström is actually from Sweden and Janus Friis is from Denmark.

;)

CC

Skype development was bank-rolled by these guys but the coding was done in Estonia (presumably by Estonians). FYI

fyi -
who cares where the coding was done?

Don't be so ascorbic and pedantic. You speak for yourself (and your children) only. Some other people may well be interested in where - which nationality did the coding. So there. You are not some kind of official party spokesman for the Unwashed Masses - irrespective of your Hollywood-jaded, over-inflated, self-estimation.

Interesting.
Did you mean acerbic? Ascorbic, if you're referring to ascorbic acid is kind of close to acerbic. But only half right.

As to pedantic, you've got the meaning wrong altogether. The comment stating who cares is a generalization which is in pretty sharp contrast to pedantic which is defined as a narrow or overly focused point of view. Pedantic could also be described as an anal viewpoint which seems to be where yours is heading.

This is the first time I stumble upon this site. What amuses me is not the article but the several comments above. You guys are cool. Very funny.

Thanks TK - I needed to kill two birds with one stone .. thanks for the clarification .. I try .. but I'm only human .. and a busy one .. so I appreciate your grammatical refination - but steer clear of the old anus there - especially the narrow, overly focused point of view - Old Bean.

OMG grow up.....how anal retentive can you get? YOSHI did you go to sleep with a thesaurus on your head? If your trying to look like an idiot, your doing a great job! Grammatical "refination"(sic)? LOL give over M8.....ON YER BIKE! {I think he meant 'recriminations' but at this point, who bloody well knows?)

OMG grow up.....how anal retentive can you get? YOSHI did you go to sleep with a thesaurus on your head? If your trying to look like an idiot, your doing a great job! Grammatical "refination"(sic)? LOL give over M8.....ON YER BIKE! {I think he meant 'recriminations' but at this point, who bloody well knows?)

About the license - maybe someone with an alternate skype-type offering took over the license?

That's what i am thinking Mr.b. Skype would be no more soon. return 0; hahaaha!

Looks like oovoo is going to get more business.

Based on the information here and elsewhere about this situation, the entire transaction is suspicious. Consider this scenario: A startup creates an emergent application that provides a service that a lot of people want (low cost, high quality VoIP)...that just happens to be good technology. The core component is likely the compression and other algorithms that provide the high QoS. Such software products are typically layered by design necessity and, if one was a coniving type, he would sell the application for a high price and not reveal in the transaction papers that he was excluding a core component. Then after the dupe paid all the money, make more money still by licensing the core technology (seems more like coercion, elsewise the $2.6B is totally flushed from the start, right?) to the duped party. Then later, after seeing the application blossom and the usage go up, greed steps in again. With the critical service component in hand, and by denying its licensing to the former partner, the highly successful application is rendered useless in a flash, but the core component remains reusable. How? With the critical service component already developed, all you have to do is build (or buy) the application layer to have a similar high quality application (a much less challenging propostion). And, you have billions of bilked money to do it (besides the original $2.6B, how much was the licensing for those years?). And more than likely the creative, inventive engineering type that developed the core algorithms probably only made enough money to pay rent for 4-6 months!

This is so obvious....like the plot in a cheap detective novel! This scenario is more plausible than many might think....it has been done before, and many times over. However, I love it when lawyers get taken. I do not feel sorry for eBay, but if this scenario is correct, it should not stand and eBay should not be left holding the proverbial bag). Maybe this time eBay gets better lawyers -- not just the typical crooks, but some that are technically smart, as well as coniving as the original offenders.

I like hearing where the coding was done.

oh,great, my sister uses skype, she gets mad if she can't use it.