Sus Nyrop :: Blog :: Skype sold to eBay

September 12, 2005

Skype sold to eBay

According to Reuters and the Danish TV news, Skype will be taken over by eBay, making it possible for buyers and sellers to connect via VoIP telephony. EBay already bought PayPal, and this merging of services and tools sounds intriguing - of course you could get in touch by voice instead of email, but somehow I don't know if I wish to give up my personal Skype id, just for buying or selling a silly gadget (which I would probably not do anyway). Somehow even though spam has become an everyday triviality, I would worry more about being disrupted by unwanted, intrusive voice callers on my PC?

This is derived from my personal considerations about internet privacy versus internet presence.

Another thing is that by now, Skype has become so popular because it is free, with additional sevices such as SkypeOut (for calling regular phone lines) and Voicemail - I hope they will keep the basic call, text messenger and video conference free of charge. We tested the beta vSkype video conference last week, and the voice quality was good, webcams for those who had any also showing up nicely on most participants' screen. Evil tongues say that eBay stock owners have reason to fear the future as this venture may not be profitable enough - the sum they mention for this is huge, possibly 4 billion dollars...

Keywords: internet presence, internet privacy, Skype, VoIP

Posted by Sus Nyrop

Comments

Hm, forgot the URL for the Reuters article - see if this TinyURL works:
http://tinyurl.com/dfotl

(do I need to add html tags for create a clickable link?)
tinyurl.com/dfotl1

Sus herself not logged in on Tuesday, 13 September 2005, 00:50 CEST # |
The sale doesn't make sense at all. Skype is by no means the VOIP solution out there; there's an open standard, SIP, adhered to by a number of other applications including Google Talk, which is free, and Gizmo, which is both free and open source. eBay could have integrated the latter without any spend, and could have created their own version of Gizmo for minimal cash.

Ben Werdmuller on Tuesday, 13 September 2005, 11:48 CEST # |
its called the brand power hey anyone could do a auction site but ebay still has the bigest market share. i agree with you on the fact that SIP will dominate in the near future both in the voip market and the videoconferencing market

Benoit Brosseau on Tuesday, 13 September 2005, 20:22 CEST # |
Thanks for the comments. I can inform you all, that a new program called "SoftKall" is soon to be released. It will work the same way as Skype (free of course) but this program you can call from a landline or a cellphone and vice versa.

To get more information please contact me at: morten@detjodet.dk

Morten on Tuesday, 20 September 2005, 12:51 CEST # |
Skype has the marketing momentum and an enormous user base. Being viewed by many as the de facto VoIP solution, makes it very interesting at least. If the interest is 4 billion USD worth is another story.

Lars Clausen on Monday, 10 October 2005, 19:39 CEST # |