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Kazaa and Skype Co-founder Interviewed
karvind writes "BBC is running is an interview with Niklas Zennström, the internet entrepreneur behind both Kazaa and Skype, about how his two inventions came about, and how broadband and wireless devices are shaping his vision for the future. From the interview: "On the other hand, Skype, just like Kazaa and other software, are encouraging people to buy broadband connections.""
With ambitious statements such as these, I think it's just a matter of time before phone companies start taking a hard look at competition from VoIP in general. Whether they will attempt to embrace the technology and adapt or restrict its usage via litigation (as the RIAA and MPAA have done when confronted with new mediums for delivery) remains to be seen.
Kazaa encourages users to break the law. And if they're not particularly bright users, how to unknowingly break the law. There was a load of lawsuits sent out last month by the BPI (British equivalent of the RIAA) a month or so ago, and the general reaction was "Oh, I didn't know Kazaa was illegal" (generally everyone being sued were Kazaa users).
Aside from that, surely I'm not the only person here who finds it extremely hard - no, impossible - to believe that "while Zennström thought it had great potential from the start, he did not know exactly what people would use it for"? Because he then goes on to say in the article he didn't think Kazaa would get to the stage where it could compete with Napster...presumably he knew that the primary use of Napster at the time was illegal downloading?
SKyp has save the start up I work for a lot of money. It's saved me money, no more long distance charges to the family.
I think you forget how big a deal IM was when i came out. Hell, it's still a big deal, it's just a big deal you have gotten used to.
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I believe them since the adware and spyware got out of control after they sold Kazaa. In the beginning, Kazaa was great (that's why it got so popular).
You can blame them for selling their popular software to such an unscrupulous company, but everyone makes mistakes.
Skype is a great product, and they make money from long distance calls, and not from ads. With Kazaa, how were they supposed to make money without ads? That was the problem!
There are SIP (a standard VoIP protocol) clients for pretty much all platforms... KPhone works well on KDE. Skype doesn't use any standard protocols, so it's useless for communicating with most VoIP users.
Luke-Jr
Neither Kazaa nor Skype were inventions as such, sure the technology behind them may be impressive, but an invention is something that has never been done before.Both Netmeeting and Paltalk are examples of programs that have used voice chat in the past (with Napster being the relevant example for Kazaa). What he has effectively done is step into market niches, otherwise known as being in the right place at the right time.
The technology may well be impressive, but cutting the phone companies profits will eventually catch up with us. I don't think that they'll go out of business as such, but it will affect the quality of service these companies supply if they are hurting from this. Skype is not exactly the same as P2P where sharing has actually increased the number of CD sales, or where the artist and record producer have (in the past) had a license to print money (if their decent).
Telecommunication Companies have to take care of infrastructure, and pay wages to a myrriad of employees. VoIP and Skype are all very well, but what happens when the internet goes down, its happened before (at least to chunks of it), and it can happen again. Is it just going to be a case of blaming the internet when our customers ask why they couldn't contact you?
Enough for now!