Skype has been the subject of much commentary and speculation since its outage last week, caused (according to the company) by millions of computers rebooting simultaneously after receiving a routine Windows update. Some have asserted that the two-day outage (the first of its kind since Skype launched) calls the service’s reliability into question. (For me, I wonder how reliable Ma Bell was three or so years after it was launched compared to Skype.)

In any case, Skype has made a smart move by giving all of its customers—whether they were affected by the outage or not—an additional seven days on their current subscriptions to Skype Pro, Skype Unlimited, SkypeIn and Skype Voicemail. Notifications are going out via email; I just got mine. From a PR perspective, Skype has it on the ball, taking a short-term hit (what is the cumulative value of all those subscriptions?) in order to rebuild (in some cases) or reinforce (in others) goodwill among its customers?