As we recently speculated, eBay has purchased Skype. Thanks to Justin, Andrew, Martin, Mat and the others that gave me a heads up on this news about 24 hours after I posted the news link that speculated on the pending deal.
Some people have been questioning whether the combining of the web’s largest Internet auction site and the web telephony that “just works” service may not turn out so well. EBay is certainly entering uncharted waters and how much of an influence it will have on Skype as we know it is also a question to be answered in the near future. I learnt from reading about the purchase of Paypal.com by eBay that eBay made significant changes to Paypal’s culture, basically morphing it from a flexible and dynamic start-up company to a slow and bureaucratic arm of a corporate giant. Will Skype suffer the same fate?
London, September 12, 2005 – eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY; www.ebay.com) has agreed to acquire Luxembourg-based Skype Technologies SA, the global Internet communications company, for approximately $2.6 billion in up-front cash and eBay stock, plus potential performance-based consideration. The acquisition will strengthen eBay’s global marketplace and payments platform, while opening several new lines of business and creating significant new monetization opportunities for the company. The deal also represents a major opportunity for Skype to advance its leadership in Internet voice communications and offer people worldwide new ways to communicate in a global online era. Skype, eBay and PayPal will create an unparalleled ecommerce and communications engine for buyers and sellers around the world.
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From my experience with paypal – they are just shocking! Ebay is no better (ever tried paying your advertiser’s bill – they don’t make it easy – you cannot even use paypal from what I could see!).
Skype interactions have been no better – on asking for a refund three months ago because of the ordinary service on SkypeOut when calling Australian numbers and receiving an email a month later saying a reversal would take place – nothing happened. Lat week I get an email saying the Skypeout service I had bought (still no refund) had been cancelled due to some issue with the credit card (they had my money!). No all I wait for is my money to come home.
Sykpe a dynamic and flexible company? Not from a consumer’s perspective in the SkypeOut element. The Skype->Skype service is good and I still use that.
It looks as though Ebay will destroy Skype… they plan to onsell the phone numbers of skype users at $2-$12 each… http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk/blog/_archives/2005/9/13/1223435.html
As embarrassing as it may sound, I still haven’t used Skype. I am like Senator Alston, I hate new technology unless I find it first and get to tell people about it. Heh, okay I am not that bad. I am actually configuring Skype so that my parents can talk to Family overseas.
Nevertheless, eBay buying skype is a good thing. One, because eBay is owned by Philanthropist (Persian-French guy) and even though the bottom line is money, most of the money eBay acquires is used to help others with great ideas and so forth. Second, because News Corp didn’t get to buy them. If news corp. had bought Skype, we might as well have just given up on the internet. News Corp has been on a buying spree the last month or two. It is a scary time for the internet as corporations are BUYING users and traffic.
Personally I really like the idea of seeing more integration between skype and ebay – a simple click here to skype me/callme tag (online/offline status too) icon automatically inserted auctions would be cool.
I can see where skype will benefit. For sure a good chunk of ebayers are not skype users so this merger will further increase skype’s dominance of the online telephony market.
The only risk I see is if eBay doesn’t understand certain parts of the Skype success formula or doesn’t know how to take the company forward and slows it down with big corporate processes. Of course there is an argument that this sort of corporate change will benefit skype rather than harm it.
Persosanlly, to me it’s a strange mix. eBay and Skype. eBay and PayPal yes, there’s a natural convergence there … but moving into telephony?
I would have thought google, yahoo or msn would have snapped them up seeing they’re trying to be everything to everyone.
PlusOne Marketing – I’ve never had a real problem with PayPal. I’ve done about 300+ transactions (mostly peolpe paying me) via them and only had 2 bad experiences.
I’ve lost my love affair with eBay. Too many fake bids and their turbo lister is wobbly.
I saw this news on the eBay website yesterday, but didn’t notify you as I wasn’t sure it was a done deal. Just how exactly will this merger go? What do an online auction site and a communications technology website have in common? The only thing I can think of is perhaps sales support? And I can see big fat fees coming our way for this!