Some pretty surprising news today, when eBay announced its plans to buy Skype, the peer-to-peer VOIP enterprise from the same guys that launced Kazaa some years ago. The deal has the makings of the kind of bilion dollar deals that were made at the highpoint of the Internet hype in the end of the ’90’s. Like many others I do not get the deal at all.
However, according to eBay’s own justification of the deal, “markets are conversations” and “enabling the conversation” enables the market and eBay is the new market. And if trust is king, then being able to talk to the person who’s trying to sell you something enhances trust and increases value.
Yeah right. Well I really think this deal is going to turn out to be another fiasco. I mean: people can talk to each other using Skype or any other program right now, and the fact that eBay owns Skype does not mean that people will use it more? And since when is eBay a telco?
To me it would have made more sense if some telco would have bought Skype. Then again: there are so many free alternatives to Skype, based on open source technology (Skype is not open source).
Maybe I’m totally wrong here (and when the time comes, I will admit to it), but I do not see this fly.