"This is obviously a big, big moment for us, and we're certainly very grateful in many ways," Teper said. "Skype pioneered audio and video calling on the web for many, many people."
It's one of the most enduring digital brands.
In 2003, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, who previously co-founded peer-to-peer file-sharing program Kazaa, launched Skype in Estonia with help from a band of former classmates with zero experience in telecommunications. Originally, Skype was a tool for people to call one another online for free. The quirky name stood for "sky peer to peer," a reference to the service's underlying Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, architecture.