Skype in the modern world is the number one service for making voice and video calls. Since its inception in 2003, the messenger has gradually improved its interface to the point where anyone with basic skills can master it quickly.

It has paid and free versions. The latest version allows users to integrate their Skype and Facebook contacts. Such popularity of the messenger draws special attention to the history of its creation.

First steps

The first question of any user who has been using the program for years and decided to take an interest in its history is “Who invented Skype?”. The original founders of Skype were Scandinavians Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, from Denmark and Sweden, respectively. However, there were three software developers - Estonians Ahti Heinla, Priit Kazesalu and Jaan Tallinn, who created the previously famous KaZaA file sharing service.

These guys came up with a great idea - to give any user with an Internet connection the ability to communicate and talk with any other subscriber. But that's not all, it would all be completely free.

On August 29, 2003, the developers released the first official release of the application, which immediately attracted the attention of thousands of users.

It was something amazing, especially for people from less developed countries where other means of communication were expensive, limited, or not possible at all. People very quickly began to use Skype as a method of making free calls to anywhere in the world. In the blink of an eye, the application became in demand all over the world.

The first earnings of the founders

After such a rapid popularity and demand, the creators had to think that it was time for their product to generate income. They decided to start providing paid services - direct calls to regular phones from Skype and vice versa.

Moreover, they made it possible to make such calls at really discounted prices, many times lower than regular landline or mobile calls.

In 2005, the messenger was actively used by more than 70 million people. Skype began to bring good money to the owners (about $ 35 million per quarter). But that was only the beginning.

Buy Skype eBay

Also in 2005, eBay, the largest and most popular auction on the planet, bought Skype for an astonishing $2.6 billion at the time. The owners of the auction did not fully understand why they needed this development, but they considered the deal big and profitable.

Already in the next 2006, Skype's revenue doubled and amounted to about $195 million. The number of active users also quickly grew to 171 million. In 2007, revenue reached $381 million and there were 278 million users.

During those four years that the messenger was owned by Ebay, the service has become truly popular and in demand all over the world. The number of active users during this time has grown from 55 to 400 million.

In November 2009, the program is sold again. eBay announced that they had sold a 70% stake in the company for $2.5 billion. What's more, the very first owners, those who created the program, received a 14% stake in the service and a seat on the board of directors. Without investing in the development of the service a penny. They simply guaranteed, in return, that Ebay not be sued for illegal use of their patent.

Microsoft era

In 2010, the number of Skype users reached 663 million, and revenue grew by 20% to $860 million. But the company is still losing money, despite the fact that the annual loss was only $7 million.

In 2011, Microsoft announced that they were buying Skype and were willing to pay a whopping $8.5 billion for the deal. It was the largest acquisition the Windows developers have ever made.

Microsoft's managers felt comfortable paying this amount because they had big plans. They planned to integrate Skype into their applications such as Windows, MS office, etc.

Skype is now available for devices running Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8 and Windows Phones. In addition, for gadgets from Apple and Play Station Portable Sony.

Development of application versions

Skype 4.1 was launched in 2009. By 2010 Skype 4.1 was rooted on Windows, Mac and Linux. Skype has targeted the mobile market for devices such as Android, iPhone and iPad. Early versions only allowed voice calls. In December 2010, Skype video calls became available for iPhone users. By June 2011, Androids are using the same access.

Skype continues to expand into new markets, becoming available for applications such as Linux, smart TVs, game consoles. In May 2011, after the takeover by Microsoft, version 5.3 is released. It includes Facebook integration and group video calls.

The program was dynamic and far exceeded the original scheme. A large number of consumers began to move to a new platform with group calls, unlimited calls in the country and the promise of an ad-free interface.

In November 2012, Microsoft announced that Skype would become the main messaging service. Users can sign in with their Microsoft account. The Bing search bar has also been included in the installer.

The messenger is gradually adapting to the general style of Microsoft.

Skype has already established itself as the leading platform for video and voice calls, instant messaging, file sharing and collaborative chats. Microsoft has turned Skype into a winning investment and an amazing online voice and video chatting software. Its creator can be proud of his offspring.

Today, many criticize Skype, a popular online calling service that Microsoft acquired in 2011 for $8.5 billion. Former fans of the app complain on social media that the software has become very difficult to use. In the App Store and Google Play, people write negative reviews - users are not satisfied with the poor quality of calls and the huge battery consumption of the application.

In March, tech investor and columnist Oi Malik tweeted that Skype was once a "benchmark for quality" and expressed his outrage at the company's owner. “This is the destruction of Skype. I was forced to use it today, but it won't happen again."

Microsoft believes that criticism is exaggerated. They are sure that it is partly related to software updates. Of course, there are other factors that make many skypers look for new platforms for communication.

After acquiring Skype, Microsoft refocused it on the corporate market. Due to these changes, the online calling service has become less user-friendly, and many users have switched to other applications owned by Apple, Google and Facebook.

Photo: Bloomberg. Steve Ballmer

Microsoft last released data on the number of Skype users in 2016. Then the application was used by about 300 million people. Some analysts believe that this figure has not changed since then. Two ex-Microsoft employees, who wished to remain anonymous, claim that at the end of 2017, this number remained the same in user statistics.

Skype was founded in 2003 by a couple of Scandinavian entrepreneurs. The app freed people from the tyranny of the phone companies by offering cheap international calls. Most used the service for free, and Skype money brought prepaid calls to regular phones. The company had many owners, including eBay. By 2011, it was under the control of a consortium of investors led by the Silver Lake fund.

In an effort to reduce Microsoft's dependence on the personal computer market, former CEO Steve Ballmer decided to acquire Skype. He was attracted by the great potential of this online brand and paid 40% more than the appraised value for it.

“It was the most recognizable brand at the time. For Microsoft, it was an opportunity to be part of something big,” said Laurie Wright, senior Skype manager.

After the acquisition, Skype has always been positioned as a tool for making cheap or free international calls. Former Skype CFO Bill Kofod recalls border guards in other countries constantly telling him, “With Skype, I can call my grandma!” “Skype is a legendary brand,” he says.

At first, Microsoft's management promised to keep Skype independent of its corporate communications service, Lync. However, two years later, platform integration began, resulting in Skype for Business, which became part of the Microsoft Office suite.

Today, Microsoft has literally replaced the corporate phone system with an application, adding elements of a messenger, AI and a social network. Teams, Microsoft's version of Slack, with Skype for Business. LinkedIn, another company acquired by Microsoft, will provide skypers with professional profiles of the people they are about to call. In addition, Skype can now translate calls into twelve languages.

As evidence of the effectiveness of the new strategy, Microsoft cites the fact that Skype for Business customers include industrial giant General Electric, consulting company Accenture and the world's leading banks. Forrester analysts conducted a survey among more than 6 thousand IT employees of companies and found that 28% of them prefer Skype for Business for conferencing and only 21% use competing Cisco products for this.

Atkins, an architectural and engineering design, construction and consulting services firm, says 18,500 employees use Skype for calls, conferences and projects. “We did a full competitor analysis, but we trusted Microsoft's vision. Very rarely do we run into any issues,” says Nick Ledger, Collaboration Manager at Atkins.

However, Microsoft paid a heavy price by putting the interests of corporations ahead of the interests of users. If for the former the most important thing is the security of the service, its complexity and multicomponent nature, then for the latter it is simplicity and convenience. As a result, the complexity of enterprise software has replaced the simplicity that users value. Although Microsoft retains two separate applications - for business customers and ordinary users - both are based on the same technology, which is now based on the needs of corporate employees.

Skype tried to fit in with everyone, and therefore “always lost to competitors,” says Matthew Culnaine, an expert in user experience and content strategy at The Open University (UK).

Frequent app updates don't help either. After a design change in the summer of 2017, Skype's ratings plummeted. Journalist Brian Krebs tweeted that the recent redesign was "probably the worst ever". This tweet and the sheer number of retweets caught the attention of the Skype team: “Brian, we are sorry for your inconvenience. We'd love to hear more critiques. We'll see if we can help you with something."

Creative Strategies analyst Carolina Milanesi shared, “We all loved Skype for what it was—simple and no frills. Now he's not the same." Previously, she often used a paid Skype subscription to call her mother in Italy. Then her mother bought an iPad, and they've been in Facetime ever since.

While focusing on the corporate market, Microsoft has also overlooked the rise in popularity of messaging apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and WeChat. Microsoft killed off Windows Live Messenger five years ago, just as WhatsApp's audience was starting to grow. The messenger now has 1.5 billion users, and its features include key features of Skype.

What is Skype

Skype is one of the most popular Internet telephony services in the world, as well as the messenger preferred by many.

Skype was created by Skype Technologies SA in 2003. The history of creating a product for citizens of the post-Soviet space is notable for the fact that Estonians took part in writing the first program. Even now, according to Wikipedia, Skype has the majority of developers and almost half of the general department in its Estonian division. The company itself began as a national Swedish company, and positioned its program as VoiP- means of Internet telephony. Following the acquisition in 2011 of Skype Limited by Microsoft, the company is a division of Microsoft headquartered in Luxembourg,

What does the word Skype, which gave the name of the world-famous program and company, mean? It is useless to look in dictionaries for how this abbreviation is translated. Initially, the application program was called Sky Peer-to-Peer, which can be translated as "heavenly peering". The name described the principle of the service, but it turned out to be too long, they decided to shorten it to Skyper, the domain of the same name turned out to be busy, and we decided to use a truncated Skype.

First version 0.97 appeared in 2003, and since then the version history of the program has been a history of innovation and world conquest. All versions of Skype - from the first to the latest - are the introduction of new technologies, focus on new types of devices and removal from competitors. The number of users and market share of international calls is constantly growing.

What is Skype today? This is a free program with which users can make calls to other subscribers and exchange messages and files with them. Subscribers can also subscribe to paid services: calls to fixed and mobile phones, sending SMS, access to Wi-Fi. What can be done on Skype for free today was still possible yesterday only with a subscription: for example, . At the time of this writing, beta testing of a version with a built-in function has been launched instant translation. The dictionaries available for voice calls and chats differ. For voice communication, this is so far English and Spanish, for messages - 44 languages ​​used in Microsoft Translator. In the near future, we are waiting for simultaneous translation into Russian of conversations and words in more than 40 languages ​​of the world.

Those who have this program prefer to use it both as a means of audio and video communication, and as a messenger, that is, via the Internet. Some argue that Skype is a social network. But to call it a social network can only be a very big stretch. Here, information about your posts is available only to a certain circle of users included in the correspondence, and from public information, and even then only to your contacts, information - how old you turn on your birthday, a small photo and status. Still, Skype is a "normal" communication service, the main purpose of which is to provide high-quality communication.

The application is so popular that in connection with it there are many questions even among the uninitiated. We answer FAQ- frequently asked Questions.

What is Skype?

What year was the app launched?

In 2003. This is the date of foundation of the company, and the creation of the first version.

Who owns the program?

After the transaction of 2011 Skype is included into Microsoft corporation

How many users around the world use Skype?

These data vary depending on the source. Usually used with numbers "more than 300 million", and here is the wiki data - 660 million. We don’t know if Wikipedia estimates Skype correctly, but the fact that the number of users is huge is also confirmed by the official “modest” data, and the reviews about the service are mostly good.

What does it mean that Skype uses VoiP?

This means that IP networks (one of which is the Internet) are used to connect subscribers. What the program does with them is another question. Skype sets the algorithm for using these networks and many other parameters.

Where is the full archive of program versions stored?

Versions that are no longer supported or that do not correspond to the state of the art are not stored in the public domain on the official website. To have access to them and be able to run them, you need to contact special repositories or specialists interested in the subject. They will help you decide what versions are available for your device in case it is outdated, and what this or that product is for.

What does the Skype logo look like?

Skype is a trademark owned by Skype / Microsoft and is protected by copyright:

Therefore, the trademark sign is integrated into the logo tm / tm:

Please note: if an adapted spelling of the word “Skype” is possible in the text, then in the logo the word can only be used as it is written in English.

We hope this article allowed you to understand why Skype is needed, what it is and where it came from.

Now you need and - welcome to the world of unlimited communication!

Video review:

Call via the Internet to a regular cell phone or landline phone? Easily. Contact another user on the network by establishing direct audiovisual contact? Even easier! VoIP and softphones are rapidly conquering markets around the world, and at the forefront of this "attack" is a program whose name is well known to everyone - Skype. That's what we'll talk about today.

Before Skype, or a digression into history

Many science fiction writers of the 19th-20th centuries predicted that sooner or later humanity would invent a kind of videophone, thanks to which the interlocutor could not only be heard, but also seen. Some especially gifted individuals (Tesla, for example) started talking about it even at a time when even an ordinary telephone was a curiosity.

In fact, humanity coped with the invention of such a contraption sooner rather than later. Judge for yourself: even 15 years ago it was hard to think that very soon we would have compact and powerful cell phones at our disposal, from which you can easily make a video call to anywhere in the world (that you can also easily go online, listen to music, read, watch movies, and so on, and there is nothing to say).

It is worth noting that attempts to invent a videophone as an independent device is a topic worthy of a separate story. For example, back in 1964, AT&T managed to install the first public videophone booths in New York, Washington, and Chicago. Devices bearing the name Picturephone Mod I were also installed with pomp at the headquarters of large companies. It was planned that the innovation would be a resounding success, and then universal recognition would come. In devices, by the way, 3 pairs of telephone wires were used: one for sound transmission and two (with a bandwidth of 1 MHz) for video transmission in each direction. The image was updated every 2 seconds. An additional PBX was used for video switching. But the public did not appreciate all these efforts - a call from New York to Washington cost $16 for 3 minutes, and to Chicago - $27, which scared away even the most notorious geeks of that time. As a result, the booths were dismantled already in 1968.

However, we digress. Our today's story will not be about video payphones at all, but about the idea of ​​​​transmitting voice and image over the Web, which appeared almost before the invention of computer networks themselves.

As paradoxical as it sounds, until a certain period of time, telephone networks and data transmission networks existed independently of each other. The fact is that the equipment and channels of those years simply could not cope with both at the same time. Scientists have been struggling to solve this problem since the 60s, but the first noticeable progress was made only in the 80s, when the ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) was created - a network that supported services for the transmission of voice, data, video and text. But those were only the first steps, and the real results and the actual “birthday” of Voice over IP (VoIP) and video conferencing came in the 90s.
The first sign that broke through the dam of "network silence" was the Internet Phone program, created by the Israelis from VocalTec. Internet Phone was released in early 1995 and, in fact, was a banal IM + softphone, with which you could call other PCs by voice. But what seems banal now, then evoked emotions like “omigod, it's magic !! 11.” And this despite the fact that this miracle worked in half-duplex mode, that is, unilaterally, as when talking on a walkie-talkie ( which is not surprising - the founders of VocalTec got the idea for the program while serving in the army, looking at packet voice radio).

Neither the above, nor the fact that the quality of communication usually left much to be desired, could stand in the way of progress - in a few weeks, thousands of people downloaded Internet Phone and immediately began to actively use it. This served as a go-ahead - it became obvious that the interest of the public is great, and the prospects for Internet telephony are huge. The market was immediately flooded with all sorts of clones of the Israeli program, and by the end of 1995, the DigiPhone software appeared on sale, which allowed you to listen and speak at the same time.

In the camp of software for transmitting video over the Web, things were also going well in the meantime. At the beginning of all the same 90s, craftsmen from Cornell University wrote the CU-SeeMe program, originally intended for Macs, and then released for Windows. By the way, it was with the help of CU-SeeMe in 1994 during the flight of the Endeavor NASA shuttle transmitted its image to Earth.

Interest in VoIP technology, that is, in the transmission of a voice signal over the Internet or other IP networks, grew rapidly, and already in 1996 the issues of standardization and adoption of regulations were ripe. The International Telecommunication Union, an international organization that defines recommendations in the field of telecommunications and radio, and also regulates the international use of radio frequencies, adopted recommendations for the H.323 standard, which was based on almost 50 other standards. Thus, the first standard was adopted for multimedia communication using packet-based networks that do not guarantee quality of service. At the same time, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), an open international community of designers, scientists, network operators and providers that develops the protocols and architecture of the Internet, developed the Realtime Transport Protocol (RTP), which found application in H.323.

The further development of VoIP proceeded as follows:

• 1996 was also marked by an agreement between VocalTec and the giant Dialogic. The goal of their joint project was to create the first specialized telephone gateway for IP telephony, called VocalTec Telephonе Gateway (VTG).
• 1997 gave the world the opportunity to make calls not only from PC to PC, but also from PC to phone and vice versa, as well as from phone to phone.
• The year 1999 was marked by the first specification of the open standard SIP (Session Initiation Protocols), which was developed by the guys from the IETF since 1996, and which will be discussed below. H.323 has a competitor that, as time will tell, will quickly make short work of its predecessor.

This is how the matter imperceptibly approached the new millennium, and hence the creation of Skype.

Skype

Skype belongs to the pen of European progers, namely the Estonians Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu and Jan Tallinn. These names may surprise someone, because in recent years, the creators of Skype are often called completely different people - the Dane Janus Friis (Janus Friis) and the Swede Niklas Zennstrom (Niklas Zennstrom). The thing is that both the first and the second are true.
It is possible that the names of the three Estonian developers not only caused surprise, but also seemed vaguely familiar to some readers. If you showed up, we hasten to please - you have an excellent memory. The fact is that in the early 2000s, these guys were developing the unforgettable KaZaA P2P file-sharing network, thanks to which they gained fame. The work on Skype, which gentlemen IT journalists unfairly credit to Friis and Zennstrom, respectively, was already after.

“Who are Zennström and Friis?” you ask. Of course, it was no coincidence that they also appeared in this story - this couple was directly related to the development and development of both projects (both KaZaA and Skype), and some of their "exploits" literally overshadowed the rest of the team. However, to call them "the creators of Skype" is a strong exaggeration, since these two are primarily businessmen and investors, but not developers. We will tell you more about Friis, Zennstrom and their role in Skype separately below, but for now let's get back to the program itself.

Active work on Skype was started in 2002 after a solid investment from the Draper Investment Company, and the software came out pretty quickly: the Skype.com and Skype.net domain names were registered in April, and the public saw the first beta release of the program already in August 2003. By the way, a random interesting fact - during development, the program was called Skyper (short for "Sky peer-to-peer"), and only closer to the completion of the work was renamed Skype, because the Skyper domain name was already taken.

So, what made Skype different from many other similar programs, which at that time were released a little more than a fig? Unlike other software designed for IP telephony, Skype used and still uses the P2P architecture for work, which is not at all surprising if we recall the track record of its creators. In fact, this is one of its main advantages: all voice traffic goes through network nodes, which are the users themselves (and the more users use the system, the better it works). Skype can also route calls through the computers of other users, which allows users behind a NAT or firewall to connect to each other (creating an increased load on the channels of other users).

By the time Skype entered the IP telephony market, almost all of this market was occupied by software and hardware based on the SIP standard, which it's time to talk about in more detail.

Unlike the secret Skype protocol, SIP is completely open to developers, well thought out, and easy to implement in hardware. The SIP protocol was taken as a sample for SIP. SIP messages, like HTTP requests, are transmitted over the Internet in text form, and their formats partially coincide. This greatly simplifies the development and debugging of programs that support SIP, and, quite likely, contributed to its growth in popularity. Just like Skype, SIP does not have a centralized server - there are many servers; in fact, anyone can acquire one, and they all interact with each other. The tasks of the protocol include only the establishment and coordination of communication, and it is not at all necessary that this communication be voice - it can be any other data stream (video, multimedia, interactive service).

SIP is focused on working in local networks and on good Internet channels.

Skype is the complete opposite of SIP, although some evidence indicates that the Skype protocol is based on a modified SIP. Be that as it may, there are more than enough differences: Skype is a closed protocol, and, due to its P2P structure, uses forced encryption (data is encrypted using AES-256, which, in turn, uses a 1024-bit RSA key to transfer the key Users' public keys are certified by Skype's central server when they log in using either 1536- or 2048-bit RSA certificates) and are much better suited to extreme environments than SIP. The phrase “I’m at the door, and he’s at the window” most accurately reflects Skype’s behavior pattern - close the usual range of UDP protocol ports for it, and it will switch to free TCP ports, and if it presses completely, Skype is always ready to use HTTP proxy. Some experts argue that the only way to completely block Skype is to analyze the contents of all packets that Skype, remember, encrypts. The program bypasses simpler methods.

All of the above has been seriously straining the special services of almost all countries of the world for many years - how is it that it is impossible to intercept and decipher something, this is definitely a mess! However, Switzerland, Australia, Austria, Germany and Russia have already hinted that they still have solutions for listening to Skype in their arsenal.

Skype is criticized by many security experts and even hackers. Back in 2007, in the 100th issue of ][ Chris Kaspersky devoted an extended article to this issue, entitled "Skype: a hidden threat." In the article, Chris writes the following: “Skype is a black box with a multi-level encryption system, stuffed with anti-debugging tricks of an executable file that reads confidential information from a computer and transmits it to the Network using a proprietary protocol. The latter bypasses firewalls and severely masks its traffic, preventing it from being blocked. All this makes Skype the ideal vector for viruses, worms and drones that create their own distributed networks within the Skype network.”

But Skype managed to conquer a wide audience not due to encryption and resourcefulness, but due to two very important things: simplicity and excellent sound quality.

Starting from the very first version, released in the fall of 2003, Skype supported 10 languages ​​and had the most simple interface, unlike other IMs, which was originally tailored specifically for voice communication. It also played a role that the entire procedure for installing the program and registering a new user was many times easier than that of competitors. As for codecs, Skype uses SVOPC (16 kHz), AMR-WB (16 kHz), G.729 (8 kHz) and G.711 (formerly ILBC and ISAC were also used), which, with a sufficient connection speed (30-60 Kbps) /c) allows you to get a sound comparable in quality to conventional telephone communication.

Immediately taking off the bat in 2003, Skype did not stop developing for a minute. With each new version, more and more new features and "conveniences" appeared. It makes no sense to list all these answering machines, online numbers, conferences, services for sending SMS, and so on, since the article is still not called “Skype services for dummies” :). Instead, I would like to note something else - the company developed steadily, despite the fact that in 2005 Friis and Zennstrom sold their offspring, which had already gained immense popularity (74.7 million accounts and an average of 10.8 million users on the network), eBay for the tidy sum of several billion dead presidents. The facts and figures clearly show that this has not affected the development of Skype in the worst way:

• As of today, there are more than 560 million accounts on Skype;
• There are versions of Skype for almost all platforms known to mankind, including mobile ones;
• The company provides a full range of VoIP services;
• Skype produces and sells various gadgets from headsets and webcams to full-fledged Skype-backgrounds - phones that can work both with a regular telephone network and with Skype.

We shared an orange, or patent trolling

Now, after covering all sorts of technological aspects of Skype, we can talk about more fun things - for dessert, we have the real "scandals, intrigues, investigations."

As promised, let's return to the personalities of Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis and take a closer look at them. Zennström is a graduate of Uppsala University with a bachelor's degree in business administration and a master's degree in physics. Friis, on the contrary, cannot boast of a "tower", since he once left school and went to work in the technical support of a local provider.
It just so happened that at the very beginning of their life and career path, these two got a job at the Swedish telecommunications company Tele2, where in 1996 fate brought them together.

After working side by side for several years, Zennström and Friis got along so well that already in 2000 they decided to quit and start their own business, which became the KaZaA file-sharing network. In fact, to develop it, Friis and Zennström moved to Amsterdam, hired a team of programmers, and preferred to remain in leadership positions.

However, an incident came up with Kaza - the brainchild of Friis and Zennstrem did not have time to gain momentum, as active persecution began on peer-to-peer networks. Just then, the legendary Napster closed, and, as you know, a holy place is never empty - all illegal content flowed to other networks, one of which was KaZaA. Copycats immediately began to besiege our unfortunate businessmen, wanting to drown them in lawsuits, and this state of affairs was not at all to the liking of the newly minted startups. Zennström and Friis were forced to keep the location of the company's offices secret and, in the most literal sense, go on the run, hiding from the subpoenas that rained down like a cornucopia.

When it became finally clear that the saying “time heals” does not apply to this situation, and it only gets worse, it was decided to get rid of KaZaA. A bizarre deal was made, during which KaZaA went to the Australian company Sharman Networks, registered in the Pacific island of Vanuatu. However, something was not included in this deal at that time, something very important - the rights and patents for the peer-to-peer technology that was used in KaZaA. These rights remained in the hands of Zennstrom and Friis, or rather their new company Joltid, registered in the British Virgin Islands.

You already probably understand that all these details are given here for a reason. The fact is that later it was this technology that was used to create Skype.

By the way, if we talk about the role of Friis and Zennsterm in the creation of Skype, then everything was already familiar to us - hired programmers (the same Estonians who pored over KaZaA) and two inseparable startups as the founders of the project. Although, in fairness, it should be noted here that Zennstrom was faithful to Skype and remained as CEO until 2007, that is, for another two years after the sale of the company to eBay.

So eBay. As mentioned above, in 2005, just two years after its creation, Skype was sold to eBay for a fabulous sum of $2.6 billion, plus another $1.5 billion in a few years if Skype's financials were good (it was the largest eBay acquisition in the history of the auction). Both Friis and Zennström then suddenly became billionaires and, it would seem, could easily enjoy life, start and promote other projects, invest and just spend those same billions. But it was not there.

After waiting four long years after the deal, and having managed to launch the Joost startup in that time, the prudent couple decided that it was enough to watch the development of Skype from the outside. And development, by the way, was obvious: the number of users grew from 53 to more than 400 million, the international traffic of Skype in 2008 amounted to a record 33 billion minutes, but all this did not bring the desired money to eBay. And since the profits from Skype amounted to much more modest amounts than originally planned, in 2009 the largest auction on the planet decided to get rid of the acquisition, saying that it intends to again spin Skype into a separate company and put its shares on the exchange. This message caused Friis and Zennström to suddenly become active.

Few people initially understood why eBay bought Skype at all (official statements sounded too unconvincing: “for the convenience of communication between users of the auction”), but only in 2009 the whole comedy of the situation reached the general public. It turned out that by acquiring Skype itself, eBay managed to leave the rights and patents for the memorable key technology in the hands of its previous owners. Yes, Friis and Zennström represented by Joltid. And the owners, having learned about the upcoming listing of Skype on the stock exchange, developed a storm of activity, starting to return what was sold back. So, the New York Times, for example, leaked a rumor that the former owners of Skype have already managed to spend their billions and are now forced to communicate with private investors, trying to find the missing part of the amount to make a “reverse” deal.

Moreover, savvy businessmen immediately fired a “warning shot” - since eBay had been working with Joltid all this time under a license, Friis and Zennström filed a lawsuit in court, intending to cancel the validity of this license in the UK. To start.

Mutual blackmail and attacks towards each other lasted for almost six months. During this time, eBay, as if in response to the offer of Zennstrom and Friis to buy out their offspring, managed to sell 65% of Skype shares to Andreessen Horowitz's investor group for $ 2 billion. Resourceful businessmen immediately sued again, now against the new owners of Skype, accusing them of patent infringement and demanding $75 million for each day of the service's "illegal" operation. The auction, which Friis and Zennström also didn't leave alone (because eBay still had a 35% stake!), filed a counterclaim against Joltid to ban the company from using Skype's underlying technology. Realizing that the process would probably not be won, representatives of eBay, just in case, declared their readiness to rewrite Skype from scratch, if necessary.

The end of all this circus came quite recently, in November 2009. Surprisingly, the situation was nevertheless resolved peacefully. eBay, which had previously categorically refused to pay anything to ex-Skype owners, eventually agreed to the deal. Zennström and Friis did not remain in the overlay, they not only got seats on the board of directors again, but also snatched a 14% stake in Skype. The whole point of the situation is that they did not have to fork out - eBay agreed to their terms in exchange for waiving claims and licensing their intellectual property.

We will, of course, never know what Zennström and Friis' original plan was, or if it existed at all. It is possible that they imagined "returning to Skype" a little differently, so to speak, in a more rosy light. Perhaps Joltid had the rights up its sleeve for a more appropriate occasion, and eBay's decision to get rid of Skype forced things. On the other hand, it may turn out that Friis and Zennström did not plan anything criminal at all, although it is very difficult to believe that they “accidentally” retained the rights to the key technology, and Joltid was opened in an offshore zone by pure chance.

After the above, it would be reasonable to ask the question: “what will happen to Skype next?”, Because although the division is over, it cannot be said that everything is going very smoothly. No, no, yes, they will try to ban a softphone in some country or sue the company (recently, telecommunications and cellular operators in a number of countries, including Russia, have been very bad at Skype). However, this is connected not so much with Skype itself, but with VoIP telephony in general - in the latter, OPSOS and Co., due to paranoia, often see a competitor, pest and enemy number one.

Perhaps, with regard to the future of Skype, the following can be said for sure: one of the most popular and successful VoIP services, which is used by several hundred million people, cannot simply disappear into oblivion, no matter what happens. And if the founding fathers of this software also include two such cunning and stubborn types as Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, Skype will not only not disappear, but, most likely, will find better ways to monetize and increase profits.

With agree, Skype most users have long been associated with something incredibly solid and serious. I guess Skype really is a serious thing, since so many people use it and so many other people want to be aware of exactly how the first people use it. Only here is the history of the creation of Skype, and the history of its further development from the words "serious" and "solid", if not very far, then at least clearly not close.

Exactly Skype today is almost the absolute leader in the number of dark stories, semi-legal deals and patent scandals. There are so many dark spots in the history of the program that by this criterion, it can easily win the title of world champion in gray schemes. However, while these are just words, let's move on to the facts.

Skype Background: Pirate Parents Make KaZaA

You may not believe me, but the founders of the program (not the developers, please note) were people with far from the most impeccable reputation. To complete the picture, let's fast forward to the very beginning of the "zero" when two enterprising companions Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström(pictured right) came up with and brought to light a program for sharing files KaZaA. A program that at one time broke many records in terms of the number of downloads.

It should be said that the founders of the file sharing service were mainly engaged in organizational and marketing issues, and our former compatriots, Estonians, were engaged in the implementation and creation of the project as such. Jaan Tallinn, Priit Kazesalu and Ahti Heinla(pictured left). All three programmers were in the same class.

And so, until the end of 2001, the file-sharing network was doing just fine, but then thunder struck: several very large music labels immediately sued the owners for copyright infringement. In fact, the program was declared illegal, and its owners were accomplices of pirates.

The founders of the service had to urgently go underground: the possibility of arrest and subsequent punishment was by no means illusory. For the time being, the Estonian programmers were not interested in the investigation, but then it was their turn. Fortunately, no specific charges were brought against them.

The problems ended only at the end of 2001, when the owners of KaZaA resold the service to an Australian company Sharman Networks.

The former owners made a very wise move by pre-registering exclusive rights to the data transfer protocol Global Index P2P offshore (Virgin Islands). Now they had a protected patent, which investigators from Europe could no longer reach. But for the sake of which such complex machinations were carried out, I will tell in the next section.

Creation of Skype

As I already said, KaZaA was based on the P2P protocol, which, in fact, was the main feature of the service. Its unusualness is that the protocol code is closed and extremely complex, and all transmitted data is subject to mandatory encryption. In addition, it is convenient in that when using it, no special one is needed: the users connected to the computers act as roles. Accordingly, this dramatically complicates the interception and tracking of any transmitted information.

And with such a big trump card in my hands, it would be a crime not to create something innovative on its basis. Actually, this is exactly what the enterprising and far-sighted Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström did. Having received money to start a new project from a well-known venture capitalist, they began developing a completely new client for transmitting voice and other types of messages.

That's right, that's what Skype was known to everyone today.

Since the owners of Skype already had guys “in the know” (still the same team of Estonian programmers), we didn’t have to wait for a long start - August 29, 2003 the first official release of the program was released, which immediately attracted the attention of thousands of users.

What exactly did you take Skype for? Perhaps the main advantages were ease of use and excellent sound quality. Later - also multiplatform. In fact, a powerful blow was dealt to the stomach of the entire cellular telephony industry, because now communication between users anywhere in the world was completely free.

In other words, Skype has become popular not only among law-abiding users, the service has attracted all sorts of criminals, drug dealers, terrorists, and in general everyone who did not welcome the publicity of their negotiations. Due to the fact that the data was almost guaranteed to be protected from interception, Skype has become a favorite means of communication for many dark personalities.

It got to the point that Skype's Luxembourg office received hundreds of complaints from the intelligence services of a good dozen countries. The requirements were similar: ban, declassify, allow. Only the founders of Skype were already scientists: they had an impeccable legal base on their side, which was 100% protected from external intrusion and attacks by anyone.

Ebay and Skype

By 2005, Skype became so popular that the largest planet became interested in it. To tell the truth, the auctioneers themselves did not know what exactly this service had surrendered to them, but they felt its enormous potential, and therefore began negotiations on the purchase.

In the fall of 2005, Ebay announced the purchase of Skype for a fabulous for that time amount of $2.6 billion. In the blink of an eye, the founders of the service became billionaires, and the programmers got something: each of the starting trinity received $42 million.

It would seem that a period of recognition and calm has come, you can rest on your laurels and spend profits. Nothing like that: the former owners of the service managed to enter the same river twice. Paradoxically, they sued Skype, accusing the company of not having the right to consider the P2P protocol its property, since the patent for the invention is still in the hands of the old owners. Hitro, do you agree?

I will not tell you about the long ups and downs, which, by the way, lasted more than one year, I will only say that there was a fair amount of noise. The result of all this is this: in November 2009, Skype was sold again, and the former pirates received a 14% stake in the service and a seat on the board of directors. And that's without a penny of investment, by the way. They just dropped legal action from Ebay (patent abuse, remember?).

Over the four years that Skype was owned by Ebay, the service managed to turn into a “candy”, becoming truly popular and loved all over the world. For greater effect, I will indicate only one figure: the number of users has grown from 55 to 400 million. The service was waiting for new owners who could afford such an expensive toy.

The era of Microsoft in Skype

And the big fish bit. In 2011, an agreement was reached on the purchase of Skype by a well-known company for again a record $8.5 billion. Of course, Microsoft's lawyers have now done everything so that the patent embarrassment does not happen again. The rights to Skype were obtained in absolute terms, and the cunning Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström again had a considerable profit in the form of hundreds of millions of dollars for their stake. In fact, they managed to get money from different companies twice for the same product. These are, indeed, the sharks of capitalism.

The new owners got down to business seriously, since their resources were almost endless. It is thanks to strong technical support and huge financial investments that today Skype is one of the most popular and sought-after programs in the world. The number of users has long exceeded half a billion, and this, as experts say, is far from the limit.

She is so incredible the history of the creation of Slype. The history of a service that brought billions to someone, and only a headache and numerous problems to someone. And this, I can assure you, is only a small part of the iceberg. Many facts are still reliably hidden from the general public and are unlikely to ever be made public.