Skype Technologies

The company Skype Technologies SA is headquartered in Luxembourg and offices in England and Estonia is by the Skype program developed by the company the world's largest provider of Internet telephony. In 2004, Skype generated revenues of $ 7 million for 2005, an increase of $ 60 million was planned for 2006 to $ 200 million. This increase will be achieved through fee-based services that are offered since 2004. During voice calls over the Internet can be done with the known product, which are free, the service is SkypeOut can be performed on the landline with the calls from the Internet to phones, for a fee. Skype currently has 560 million users worldwide (as of April 2010). So far sales are achieved with only 4 % of users, so that a very high growth potential exists. Skype was founded in 2003 by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, who had become known in advance by the Kazaa music file sharing.

In September 2005 negotiations of the online auction site, eBay began to purchase Skype. On 14 October 2005, the company takeover was official. The purchase price was $ 4.1 billion. Half of which was paid in eBay stock. There are also potential performance-related additional payments of approximately $ 1.5 billion, which should be due in the years 2008 or 2009. Skype remained an independent company, but should open up new business with eBay. This included both advertising and the sale of ringtones and a collaboration with the payment service PayPal, eBay bought in 2002 for 1.5 billion dollars. It was reported that Skype was losing money, and that at least in 2007 and continue in 2010 ( $ 7,000,000 ). On 10 May 2011, Microsoft Corporation announced that they will take over Skype for 8.5 billion U.S. dollars, which was completed on 13 October 2011.