eBay’s Skype Acquisition: Buyer’s Remorse?

Call it eBay’s folly.

We’ve seen over-the-top VoIP providers come, we’ve seen ‘em go; we’ve seen patent litigation bring Vonage Holdings Corp. to its knees. But Skype has seemed to be hanging on (if not even riding high) thanks to legions of rabid fans that range from globetrotting businessmen to college kids.

But while Skype can boast 330 million users and six straight quarters of profitability, it doesn’t change the fact that eBay made the somewhat dizzying choice to pay more than $2.5 billion for Skype back in 2005. And has yet to make that back. The idea was that eBay vendors would use Skype for customer service; but it just didn’t happen that way.

And so, it’s perhaps no surprise that Skype revenue not matching up with eBay’s ROI model is leading to rumors that eBay might be looking to offload the division. Not that Skype will go anywhere — still too popular and too profitable to fade away. But the future remains uncertain.

Share this article: Email, Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Yahoo!MyWeb, Windows Live Favorites, Furl
Add this article feed to: RSS, My Yahoo, Newsgator, Bloglines