In a shock announcement by eBay, Skype may be forced to close its doors after it failed to negotiate a renewal of a licensing deal with the founders of the popular VoIP telephony and chat software.
eBay who bought Skype for a record US$2.6 Billion back in 2005, failed to include a core piece of peer-to-peer network technology needed to run the program. Now the founders are reneging on the licensing deal and Skype may be left out in the cold.
Skype has around 40 million active daily users, 480 million registered accounts and is responsible for over 8% of the world's VoIP traffic. To lose such a vital communications tool would be a big loss and put a serious dent in the VoIP telephony market.
The matter is now the subject of a legal battle in the English High Court of Justice.
eBay said it was working on developing ‘‘alternative software’’ to that licensed through the founders, but this ‘‘may not be successful, may result in loss of functionality or customers even if successful, and will in any event be expensive’’.
In the filing eBay also said that, even if it was successful in developing alternative software, the technical challenge of assuring backward compatibility with older versions of Skype’s technology ‘‘may be difficult to overcome’’.
In any case this is certainly going to be an interesting battle with the outcome effecting a lot of internet users worldwide.
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