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 even impossible. 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 on 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.
Perhaps by the evening of May 10, the popular Internet resource Skype will have a new owner.
Skype was created by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis. The first release of the program and the website appeared in September 2003. The headquarters is located in Luxembourg.
October 2005 the company was bought by eBay for about $2.6 billion (an additional $500 million was later paid), but already at the end of 2009. The online auction site divested Skype by selling 65% of its shares to a group of investors for $1.9 billion: investment firm Silver Lake, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (owned by Netscape founders Mark Andriessen and Ben Horowitz), venture capital firm Index Ventures, and Canadian pension fund investment company.
eBay has previously tried to sell Skype, explaining the offer by the fact that the provider is a non-core asset for the company. However, the deal never came to fruition due to disagreements with potential buyers over the terms of the purchase and the price itself.
Skype originally planned to go public with an initial public offering (IPO) of shares. During the IPO, the company hoped to raise about $ 1 billion. On May 5, 2011, information appeared that two online giants at once - Facebook and Google - were showing interest in buying the popular Skype Internet telephony service. The two companies have independently stepped up talks about a possible joint venture with a web-based video calling service. At the same time, Facebook is also considering the possibility of acquiring Skype as a whole, the source said. The estimated price of the proposed deal was about $4 billion.
However, the deal between Facebook and Skype made more sense, since Google already has a similar service - Google Voice.
On May 10, information appears in the media about the possible purchase of the popular Internet telephony service Skype by Microsoft, while the price of the transaction is expected to be twice as much as the competitors originally offered - about 8 billion dollars.
At the moment, negotiations on the possibility of buying Skype are still ongoing, and only by the evening of Tuesday, May 10, the official outcome of the deal will be finally known.
Thus, if the deal goes through, the purchase of Skype, whose services are used by more than 660 million people worldwide, will be the largest acquisition in the history of Microsoft.
Updated! The deal went through!
Microsoft's $8.5 billion offer was a record for Skype, which was valued at a modest $2.75 billion just a year and a half ago. In this situation, the usually thrifty American corporation preferred to overpay, but it was guaranteed to save itself from competitors in the face of Google and Facebook, who looked at things more realistically.
A joint official press release from Microsoft and Skype says that Skype will become part of the corporation as a separate division. It will be chaired by current Skype CEO Tony Bates. He will report directly to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.
But the main thing that interests the multi-million audience of Skype is what fate will befall the service after its transition to a new owner. Anticipating this, Microsoft hastened to announce that it would continue to support versions of Skype for "foreign" platforms. These include both Skype clients for "desktop" Mac OS X and Linux, as well as mobile applications for iOS, Android and Symbian operating systems.
Otherwise, Microsoft intends to dispose of the service as follows. First of all, a version of Skype for the Windows Phone 7 platform will be released. It is logical to assume that the Skype client will be pre-installed on devices based on this OS, including Windows smartphones manufactured by Nokia, which should be released in late 2011 or early 2012. If Apple at one time had to develop the FaceTime video service for its computers and mobile devices literally from scratch, then Microsoft received it, in fact, already ready.
Second, Steve Ballmer's company emphasized that Skype will integrate its own online services, including Hotmail, Windows Live, Lync, a business-oriented communications platform, and Outlook.
Thirdly, Microsoft will find application for Skype in the field of video games. It was announced that users of the Xbox 360 gaming console will be able to work with the VoIP service. It is planned to use the Kinect controller in the video chat - how, one can only guess. The company already offers gamers a service for video calls Kinect Video with gesture control. On the basis of Kinect Video, Microsoft plans to launch the Avatar Kinect service, where instead of users, virtual characters will appear on the screen, repeating their movements and facial expressions.
A piece of the Skype pie could also fall to Facebook, which has fallen out of the race - after all, it is Microsoft that owns a 1.3 percent share in the social network.
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 amount of $2.6 billion for that time. 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 as 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 block of shares. 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.
Communication is one of the main components of our life. The development of technology pushed letters written by hand to the “backyard”, giving the palm to IT tools. The latter include mobile communications and the Internet. With their help, you can freely communicate, being hundreds of thousands of kilometers apart. Now we do not run to the mailbox - we rush to the computer as fast as we can, when the Skype call begins to ring melodiously and loudly in it.
Leading communication tool
Without exaggeration, we can say that this program is a kind of symbol of freedom on the Internet. Many users of this utility are seriously interested in how Skype was created and who was its founder? There are many opinions about this issue. And most of them are false. Interestingly, many Danes and Swedes declare with absolute certainty that the developers of Skype are their compatriots. However, this is not entirely true. This article talks about who really invented Skype and how this utility has gained recognition around the world.
Estonian roots
Everyone probably knows a small beautiful European country whose name automatically raises a smile - Estonia. For some reason, the population of the former Soviet Union associates this state exclusively with the slowness and slowness of its citizens. Imagine the surprise of many when it becomes known that the creation of Skype is the work of the Estonian guys. Agree, it is incredible that this country with a slow pace of life is home to one of the fastest programs for communication on the Internet. This fact contains a seemingly hidden allusion to an absolutely false idea of the temperament and character of Estonians.
The origin and development of the utility
The history of Skype began in 2003. It was then, about 11 years ago, that the Estonian guys Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu and Jan Tallinn developed the initial code, which was the foundation of the future program. At that time, they were also working on a file sharing utility between Internet users. This program is called KaZaa. Together with Estonian young people, the founders of the described file hosting service also worked on this project: Dane Janus Friis and Swede Nicholas Zenstorm. In the process of work, not even slow guys designed the code, which became the basis for the future interactive program.
In parallel with how Skype was created, programmers studied the requirements and wishes of users of the World Wide Web. It became clear that people no longer have enough of a simple chat. Therefore, the team of creators decided to endow the utility with all possible functions that will facilitate not only written communication, but also video communication, as well as the exchange of various data.
Name choice
The original name for the utility was the expression "Sky peer-to-peer", which means "Across the sky with each other." The team then settled on a shortened version of "Skyper". However, in the process of registering domains on the World Wide Web, it was discovered that this name was already taken on many resources. As a result, young people "threw" the last letter "r" from the name and opted for a simple and concise "Skype". This name selection process took several months. The final decision was made in April 2003. The result was the successful registration of domain names Skype.net and Skype.com.
Full version and rise in popularity
In August of the same year, an official program was made available on the Internet, which had almost all the functionality planned by the developers. The so-called beta version was released to the network in order to obtain detailed information about errors and malfunctions. While Skype was being created, the programmers decided in the future, as far as possible, to introduce into their “brainchild” the functions that consumers want to see. It is thanks to the beta version that the developers have collected enough information about the tastes and preferences of users, which allowed them to create a fast utility equipped with various modes.
The first full version became available to users in autumn 2003. It is noteworthy that in a few months the number of users of this program has grown hundreds of thousands of times. A huge number of people thanked those talented programmers who came up with Skype.
Advantages of the utility
What attracted users to this program?
For starters, it's free to use. The minimum and necessary set of functions for communication is available for free. Remarkably, among them the leading position is occupied by video communication. For many people who live hundreds of thousands of miles apart, this mode is a great opportunity to be closer to each other.
The second point is quick registration. In order to become a member of the large "Skype family" it is enough to enter your mailbox address in the field, select a nickname and password. And that's it. Now you can enjoy.
This utility also has a convenient and intuitive interface. Thanks to the well-designed toolbar, you can easily switch modes, change tabs and customize the program. The fourth point is a convenient and quick search for an interlocutor. Just go to the "Contacts" tab and click "Add contact". We enter a name for the search and in the window that appears, select the one we need. A request to be added to the contact list will be sent at the same time.
Of course, the huge advantage of Skype over other programs for communication is the presence of a large number of different functions. The first and most common (like all similar and similar utilities) is the ability to send and receive simple text messages. The presence of video calls has made Skype the leading application for contacting distant interlocutors. In addition, using the program, you can share various files: send photos, documents, music, videos, and more.
First problem
Two years after the release of the program, the first unpleasant event for developers occurred. Trying to introduce the population of China to the new mobile version of the utility, a team of young programmers received serious resistance from local telecommunications companies. The reason for this was the fear of Asian corporations to lose control over the conquered market segments. Only a few Chinese companies made concessions and agreed to add the SkypeOut application to their mobile phones.
Sale and returns
The rapid growth in popularity has attracted the attention of large companies to this program. In 2005, the developers sold their "brainchild". The buyer was eBay, which offered $2.6 billion for the interactive utility. After some time, the corporation, known worldwide for its online auctions and the PayPal payment system, paid bonus payments to the developers of the program, increasing the cost of Skype by 500 million. The history of the creation and modernization of the utility includes another owner. In 2011, eBay sold the rights to the program back to the developers and their attracted investor, Microsoft. The deal amounted to $8.5 billion.
At the moment, this is the full version of the story about how much the developers have yet to come. A huge number of plans are in front of programmers. We can only look forward to new and more advanced versions of the Skype interactive communication program.
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 convenient to use, 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 Microsoft acquisition, 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 proof 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 company, 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 general 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.
