[jodrellblank]

How are advertisements unsavory? Is this same opinion of yours applicable against google, for the ads on it's search engine?

When you search Google, it uses Google's servers and web index.

Skype uses other user's bandwidth to route calls.

Leeching other people's bandwidth and also advertising to you while doing so, stings.

(Yes they have directory services and development to pay for, and yes they have infrastructure, for POTS-integration, but on the other hand, POTS-integration isn't free, it's already charged for separately on a service-use basis).

[FreeFull]

Microsoft has been working to make Skype only use Microsoft's servers for a while now. I believe a lot of Skype data is going through these servers already, and since no users can become new supernodes any more, some time in the future all the data will go through Microsoft's servers.