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What Type of IPO Should E-Bay Use To Take Skype Public

E-Bay use IPO to take Skype

Introduction

Skype, a subsidiary of eBay, was founded in 2003 by entrepreneurs Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis both born and raised in Sweden. Skype is online communication software that you can use to talk to anyone anywhere in the world using the technology VoIP2 (Voice over Internet Protocol). Calls to other users of the same service and to free-of-charge numbers are free, while calls to other landlines and mobile phones can be made for a fee also known as Skype credit. Additional features include global user directory, call forwarding, instant messaging, file transferring, call logs and video conferencing. Skype has it's headquarter in Luxembourg, and offices in London, Tallin, Tartu, Stockholm, Prague and San Jose (Carter, 2005).

Discussion

Skype provides good quality through highly efficient compression and it's free. The software is based on peer-to-peer networking and runs on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and Pocket PC. These factors working together are the reason why Skype is considered the most popular VoIP software available. It's being used by millions of people world wide and it's continuing to grow, connecting more and more people to each other.

But Skype was by no means the founder of this technology. Alexander Bell invented the telephone technology in 1876 and in 1995 the first Internet phone software appeared by a company named Vocaltec. Vocaltec released the first internet phone software called “Internet Phone” in 1996. Since the invention of this software hobbyist all over the world began to recognize the potential of sending voice data packets over the Internet instead of communicating through standard telephone service. Skype is not the only VoIP tool today, nor the first, but because it provides good quality through highly efficient compression and is free, it has become widely used. The methodology used by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis has always been the same (files.shareholder.com).

They have former created a very popular file download program named Kazaa3 which also has had a major success for its features, mainly because it's been based on the use of peer-to-peer technology4. So it all begins by the drawing board. The important question is what are people in need of that internet could fulfill? Once this question is answered they move forward with a group of computer engineers, programmers, and tech wizards. Next the group comes up with a name, something that has never been used before. The same name becomes the name of the new website where the public can download the software for free and test it. The application is simple, user friendly, and it will work well and most importantly it will do something that you want which you currently pay money for (files.shareholder.com).

Skype is the second company that the two Swedish guys created (The first Kazaa). They announced that Skype was to be a free internet telephony program. Niklas Zennström said that with the delivery of Skype that telephony was going to be a ...