Everyone knows what Skype is, and for some people, it’s an important and convenient part of their lives. But, if the Skype team had gone along with their original plans, instead of being a video call and messenger app, it would be a WiFi sharing service.
“The initial idea was to develop a WiFi-sharing network, and then provide various ‘telecom-like’ services on top of that, such as TV and telephony,” said Jaan Tallinn, founding engineer, through Reddit. The service could have been compared to Fon, but an issue put a stop to all their plans at the time. TV services couldn’t be offered because they were facing ‘copyright’ lawsuits for being the developers of the file-sharing site called Kazaa. Besides that, they were not able to acquire an efficient VoIP product for the service. They were going to call their VoIP product Skyper, but the name was already taken.