In the last years of 90’s, Internet was mainly used for: chatting, listening music, reading the newspapers online, sending the emails.
In the 2000, the swedish entrepreneur Niklas Zennström and the danish Janus Friis pursued the success by the peer to peer (P2P) and file sharing application KaZaA.
Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis
The peer to peer (P2P) software application KaZaA was designed by some programmers in Estonia, before the two entrepreneurs Zennström and Friis to purchase it in the 2003. After purchasing, it became the most famous downloaded application for sharing music, but because some legal issues,the Sharman Networks company became the owner of it. The experience of KaZaA helped Zennström and Friis to make a new peer to peer (P2P) software application for the voice and video callings over IP network: Skype.
P2P Skype network
Skype leveraged the same KaZaA’s peer-to-peer network technology, but for voice and video transmission. The idea was: “as well people were using Skype, as the connection was more reliable for each of them”. Skype achievement is the users to be able to have free voice calls to each other from anywhere in the world. They are able to call and video call by their home computer or laptop, mobile phone and an headset over data network. Skype is offering a free of charge basic phone service, long-distance and international calls over Internet Protocol (IP). The firm earnings are coming from the fees on the services such as: voice mail, call waiting, downloaded ring tones and calls to land-based or home telephones. After selling Skype to e-Bay in the 2005 and purchasing again it, the two business partners decided to sell totally the company to Microsoft. Today Skype is the most famous VOIP program in the world.Niklas Zennström has founded ATOMICO, an investment company for hi-tech business after saling Skype, while Janus Friis is Co-Founder of STARSHIP, a company in the market of commercial robotics.