The investigation reportedly began in June, shortly after Edward Snowden leaked details about secret NSA surveillance programs (including PRISM and XKeyscore) to several major newspapers.Īfter Microsoft acquired Skype in May 2011 for $8.5 billion, the company reportedly began providing substantially more data to the NSA.

Based in Luxembourg, Skype's creators also created the Kazaa peer-to-peer network.Join today’s leading executives at the Low-Code/No-Code Summit virtually on November 9. Currently free features include conference calling, a global directory, instant messaging, call tracking, and file transfer. In announcing the new services, Skype founder and CEO Niklas Zennstrom said the firm will continue to develop features for Skype's various plans. The commercial SkypeOut version, Skype for Windows Version 1.0, is the firm's first venture into paid markets. Skype for Linux and Skype for Pocket PC were also made available Tuesday, although they are still beta versions. The traditional Skype service remains free, but caller and receiver must have special software and hardware, typically headphones and a microphone.

And we haven't been in business for a year yet.'įor the commercial service, the firm said subscribers can acquire credit for global calling at rates around two cents a minute. 'At this exact moment, 469,486 users are online with Skype. 'We've had more than 100,000 downloads of our software in the last 12 hours,' Kelly Larabee, Skype spokesperson, said Tuesday. Previously users of Skype service had to have Skype proprietary software and gear at both caller and receiver ends of calls. The new paid commercial service - called SkypeOut - terminates calls at virtually anywhere in the world where there is a standard telephone. At the same time, the company made available beta versions running Microsoft Pocket PC OS and Linux. Skype Technologies, the peer-to-peer Internet phoning system, moved from its beta category to commercial service Tuesday.

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