SkypeBay?
Another day, another Skype rumor. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Skype is in talks with eBay, but from the article it seems, these are just talks. Yahoo, Google, NewsCorp… so now eBay. Who’s left? Microsoft? I am not sure what to make of the conversations, because frankly at $2-to-$3 billion, it doesn’t make sense for eBay to get into a whole new business. I can understand giving the consumers ability to click-and-call the seller/buyer.
But it can be done fairly cheaply and easily. When connecting to PSTN, eBay will then have to deal with all that comes with it, including a nosy and notoriously pesky FCC. Are they ready for it? Why not partner with someone – and there are enough desperate companies who will do this – and get the “voice apps” embedded into their products. There is a good reason why Yahoo’s Dialpad service still uses Net2Phone, and Google hasn’t touched the PSTN as yet.
Ari Jacoby, President and CEO of VoiceStar, a pay-per-call company emailed me with his thoughts, “Because 95% of the referral economy or lead generation business is offline (Rent.com), they (eBay) need a technology solution that is custom tailored to the performance-based marketing niche–one that allows merchants to pay for calls.”
A theoretical Ebay Pay per call offering is much more interesting than Ebay
morphing into MCI
Andy is normally right about a lot of things, but not this one. PaulK says, “color me baffled.” Fred Wilson says, “I think Skype is a bargain at $2bn to $3bn.” That’s a VC talking! :-)
Anyway this deal brings up all those issues I have been talking about for the longest time – their looming battle with Google, and the limit of the eBay network. In other words, two issues which hover over future growth like monsoon clouds.
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who will buy XTEN?
Apparently the talks are off… via Fark:
“Ebay reportedly in talks to buy Skype. Talks fail when at the last second some jerk bids $3,000,000,000.50″
Apparently the talks are off… via Fark:
“Ebay reportedly in talks to buy Skype. Talks fail when at the last second some jerk bids $3,000,000,000.50″
Apparently the talks are off… via Fark:
“Ebay reportedly in talks to buy Skype. Talks fail when at the last second some jerk bids $3,000,000,000.50″
Is Skype kicking up free marketing by all these rumors? I sure is viral!
Skype has got more mainstream press today from every major news agency than I have ever seen. Is it all a hoax?
If it’s true – it’s a terrible idea. $2-3b for a company doing $70m in revenue (maybe) – talk about destroying shareholder value. What are they smoking over there?
Google’s growing size (it recently overtook Ebay as the biggest pure play internet business), its upcoming payment gateway threathen Ebay. Add the attractive VoIP opportunity to the picture and it makes perfect sense. This has nothing to do with Ebay’s auction business!
More here
Morris:
Since you ask this “who will buy xten” question over and over, let me ask, why do you care and why do you think anyone will buy them? Why do you think xten is remotely similar to Skype?
Just curious.
All this rumors reported in the blogosphere are really bad for other VOIP competitors who really try to be disruptive. Take Wengo , there is very few post about this company who GPL his VOIP client and use only standards like SIP. I really hate Skype and the way these guy do business,Just remember how much spyware and virus Kazaa ( Also a Skype founder company) was installed in your PC.