5 ms·

Wow how ruthless. If this is true then I wonder if it will make people more weary of doing business with them. Especially, their venture fund.

• jacquesm 17y ago
  I agree, maybe they think that it won't make any difference to them in the future but I'm not so sure. This does not reflect very well on them. They cleaned up pretty good when they sold their project to ebay, these lawsuits are very ugly indeed. Kazaa was spun out in a pretty sneaky fashion as well, they jumped all over the place to stay ahead of the law, then they made skype on the back of the tech they wrote to make kazaa work. So effectively all this harks back to the kazaa days. Ebay messed up royally when they bought it, but as far as I know it was paid several times over, no need to try to do another round of extortion. Skype is a pretty good product on top of a nice piece of networking code but nothing that could not be done again. By risking the future of skype (and possibly even ebay) they really show they don't care about anybody but themselves. Not the best tag to have on you as a business person. In Europe everybody that wants to be somebody is still fawning over them though, I wonder how long that will last.
  • Herring 17y ago
    > Skype is a pretty good product on top of a nice piece of networking code but nothing that could not be done again. It's about the network effects. That makes it almost impossible to duplicate.
    • panic 17y ago
      Unless it shuts down.
• tortilla 17y ago
  Imagine their next deal, the counter party is going do a year of due diligence.