is the Luxembourg-based company that develops and operates the VoIP software Skype.
Founded in 2003 by Swedish-born entrepreneur Niklas Zennström and the Dane Janus Friis, the company is headquartered in Luxembourg, with offices in London, Stockholm, Tallinn, Tartu, Prague, and San Jose, California.
Skype was released as a simple computer-to-computer, or computer-to-telephone program. Support for paid services such as SkypeOut, SkypeIn, and voice mail allows the company to generate its revenue as well as making local and international telephone calls easier to perform via your computer, sometimes cheaper than other companies' rates for similar services.
eBay acquired Skype Limited in September 2005 and in April 2009 announced plans to spin it off in a 2010 IPO.
Skype has faced challenges to its intellectual property and political concerns by governments wishing to control their telecommunications systems.
As of 2010, Skype is available in 27 languages and has 100 million worldwide users.
Acquisition by eBay
Parts of this section (those related to the sale of a majority stake by eBay) may no longer be up to date. Please update this section to reflect recent events or newly available information, and remove this template when finished. Please see the talk page for more information. (July 2010)
The auction site eBay began talks with Skype in September 2005. On 12 September 2005, it was announced that eBay would purchase Skype in a deal worth approximately USD$2.6B, in up-front cash and eBay stock. The transfer of ownership began and eBay officially acquired Skype on October 14, 2005.
However, analysts were not impressed with eBay's move, saying, "I don't see a lot of point to eBay buying Skype" , or, "If eBay were to make this sort of move it would basically be admitting that 'our core market is decelerating'." At the time, eBay had been purchasing many companies in moves to boost its market position and increase its annual revenue. However, eBay stated that their intention was to implement Skype into their auction website to allow buyers and sellers to speak prior to bidding and to create a powerful internet environment.{cn} Speaking in 2005, eBay chief-executive Meg Whitman said, "Communications is at the heart of e-commerce and community."
P2P licensing dispute lawsuit and IPO offering
In its 2008 Annual Report, eBay admitted to an on-going dispute between it and Joltid Ltd. over the licensing of its peer-to-peer "Global Index" technology in its application. It announced that it terminated a standstill agreement, allowing either company to sue. On 1 April 2009, eBay filed with a UK court to settle the legal dispute. A few days later, eBay announced the planning of a public stock offering in 2010 to spin off Skype as a separate, publicly-owned company. Some media outlets characterized the proposed sale and ongoing provision of Skype as being under threat because of the concurrent dispute.
On 1 September 2009, a group of investors led by Silver Lake bought 65% of Skype for $1.91 billion. This prompted Joltid to countersue eBay on 17 September 2009.
Other Intellectual property challenges
Since Skype's technology is proprietary and closed to outside review, it is unknown to what extent it can potentially intrude upon other parties' patents and copyrights. It is not unreasonable, therefore, to expect legal challenges from third parties concerning intellectual property issues.{cn}
Streamcast lawsuit
StreamCast Networks filed a complaint in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, alleging theft of its peer-to-peer technology and violation of the "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations" statue. The compliant, titled; StreamCast Networks Inc v. Skype Technologies S A, was filed on January 20, 2006 in Federal Court in the Central District of California and assigned Case Number, 2:2006cv00391. The $4.1 billion lawsuit did not name Skype's parent company, eBay, when initially filed. Steamcast's lawsuit was subsequently amended on May 22, 2006 to include eBay and 21 other party defendants.
In its lawsuit, Streamcast seeks a worldwide injunction on the sale and marketing of eBay's Skype Internet voice communication products, as well as billions of dollars in unspecified damages.
IDT lawsuit
On June 1, 2006, Net2Phone (the Internet telephone unit of IDT Corp.) filed a lawsuit against eBay and Skype accusing the unit of infringing U.S. Patent 6,108,704, which was granted in 2000.
Political issues
China 2005
For a brief period, SkypeOut was blocked in some regions of mainland China (notably Shenzhen) by the operator China Telecom for undisclosed reasons; it has been speculated that this may relate to SkypeOut's ability to take lucrative international and long-distance business away from the People's Republic of China's state-controlled telecommunications companies.
Skype is one of many companies (others include AOL, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Cisco) which have cooperated with the Chinese government in implementing a system of Internet censorship in mainland China. Critics of such policies argue that it is wrong for companies to assist in such policies, which might allow them to profit from censorship and restrictions on freedom of the press and freedom of speech. Human rights advocates such as Human Rights Watch and media groups such as Reporters Without Borders state that in their view, if companies stopped contributing to the authorities' censorship efforts the government could be forced to change.
Niklas Zennström, chief executive to Skype, told reporters that its joint venture partner in China is operating in compliance with domestic law. "TOM Online had implemented a text filter, which is what everyone else in that market is doing," said Mr Zennström. "Those are the regulations," he said. "I may like or not like the laws and regulations to operate businesses in the UK or Germany or the US, but if I do business there I choose to comply with those laws and regulations. I can try to lobby to change them, but I need to comply with them. China in that way is not different."
France 2005
In September 2005, the French Ministry of Research, acting on advice from the General Secretariat of National Defence, issued an official disapproval of the use of Skype in public research and higher education; some services are interpreting this decision as an outright ban. The exact reasons for the decision were not given.
United States, CALEA 2006
In May 2006, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) successfully applied the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act to allow wiretapping on digital phone networks. Skype is not yet compliant to the Act, and has so far stated that it does not plan to comply.
India 2006
In December 2006, the Indian government announced it is preparing a crackdown on Internet telephony services, citing security risks and loss of revenue. The clampdown is targeted at outsourcers and other Indian IT businesses that use foreign-owned Internet telephony services, such as Skype and Yahoo!, to cut their phone bills and evade the six percent revenue share and 12 percent tax imposed on local services by the government. According to The Times of India, companies must reveal the names of licensed service providers they purchase bandwidth and Internet telephony minutes from. Companies will also have to undertake that they will not use the services of unlicensed Internet service providers.
United Arab Emirates 2006
Skype was abruptly blocked in the UAE for undisclosed reasons—Skype users in the United Arab Emirates are being blocked from the Skype.com site, which prevents them from buying minutes for use with SkypeOut and taking advantage of deeply discounted international calling rates. The blockage has been speculated to originate within Etisalat, the only ISP in the United Arab Emirates
Oman
The Sultanate of Oman has also blocked access to the Skype.com website preventing users from accessing SkypeOut in order to maintain Omantel's monopoly on the telecommunications market in the country.[citation needed] This has also to do with security issues as well as economic ones as it is difficult to monitor the calls made with Skype.Many other Persian Gulf countries pursue similar policies regarding Skype for largely the same reasons.
Germany
Skype was found to be guilty of violating the GNU General Public License in one of its for-sale products, the SMC WSKP100.
(Source:wikipedia)
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