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eBay To Buy Skype For $2.6 Billion
rfunches writes "It's not a rumour anymore. BBC News online reports that eBay will pay 'half the amount in cash and the other half in stocks to create an unparalleled e-commerce and communications engine'." The $2.6 billion purchase would give eBay access to the VoIP market, of which Skype claims it has 2 million users online at any given time. BBC speculates that eBay will use Skype to allow sellers and bidders to communicate via voice; I have also heard that live auctions a la Sothebys might also be a possibility. Also reported at Wall Street Journal (registration), New York Times."
Here's the link to their announcement
Summation 2
they haven't bought the users, they've bought the name skype. how many times in the past year have you heard (not read) people using that name, and how great it is? i don't spend a lot of time with computer people, and everywhere it's skype-this, skype-that. 2.6 billion isn't that much for the kind of growth this business will see. last year skype made 7 million dollars. next two years it's projected at 60 and 200 million. 150000 new users daily.
It's only free if you do Skype to Skype calling or call 800 numbers.
It's about 2 cents a minute for outbound calls in the US. This is called SkypeOut.
And in order to get an real phone number, you have to pay for SkypeIn, which looks like it is going to cost about $60 a year, though its still in beta.
So, if you make 500 minutes of calls, its slightly more expensive than the Vonage SoftPhone.
If they made it a flat rate for unlimited calls, I'd buy it in a second.
BidPay is one. I'm not saying it's better or worse, I'm just saying it's an alternative. There are others as well. I've used a few of them when purchasing things via Ebay, but I don't remember what most of them were.
My Tech Posts on Twitter
It is to the Gizmo Project as AIM is to Jabber.
h tmlrel=url2html-22255http://www.gizmoproject.com/g izmo-end-user.html>).
BTW, Gizmo uses open standards, but is not open itself (see ahref=http://www.gizmoproject.com/gizmo-end-user.
SIP will (probably) be incorporated into the next gnomeMeeting release.
I've been flirting for a while with switching to Gizmo Project. Now there's a good reason to do it even if one has to persuade their contacts to make the switch too.
http://www.gizmoproject.com/)
This is not about integrating VOIP into eBay's auction business. It's about large tech companies scrambling to get a share of the predicted-to-boom VOIP market.
0 0000e2511c8.html
Just recently, Microsoft purchased Teleo, which will allow MSN messenger users to make PC-to-Phone calls. Yahoo purchased Dialpad, which has similar capabilities to Skype (PC-to-PC and PC-to-Phone). And of course Google introduced Google talk, which is the first step in the process. eBay just doesn't want to be left out.
This is not really my insight. See for example:
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/d1218d8c-2097-11da-81ef-
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
How are they going to earn that back from a "free" VoIP service?
By charging for extras.
I have a number in the US, one in Finland, and one in Sweden. Plus I use it to call out to people with cell phones and land lines all over the US, Asia, and Europe.
I pay for these extras, but it is so worth it.
Maybe next time you should educate youself on a company's business model before you trash it.
WorldPay, FirePay, NETeller, ProtX, BidPay, NoChex, Verisign, SecPay, FastPay, NetBanx, ChronoPay, PPPay, MoneyBookers, ACT eCash, 900Pay, Citadel, etc. etc.
Isn't the POTS system closed?
No, it is an open standard, regulated by the FCC, 47 CFR 68.3.
See the FAQ
--fatboy
Skype works behind firewalls because it can relay calls off another node that is *not* behind a firewall. If corporate goon A calls corporate goon B where both are behind a firewall, the call is going to be routed through a *random* box on the internet. It could be a PC in a college residential network or some dude's box in kerplexistan. While this solution does work it has a number of problems:
1) If the number of machines without firewalls starts to fall dramatically skype users are SOL. This could happen if most PC's have an automatic firewall enabled or broadband providers start shipping modems with built in firewalls.
2) I don't know about you but it's a bit odd routing my voice traffic through non authenticated computers - encryption be damned.
3) Routing around firewalls provides a *good* calling experience but not reliable. Skype calls can drop on you randomly. You also can have trouble connecting when you want to call. While skype is great for people who want high quality calls that work most of the time, it isn't really great when you try on rely on it.
I use skype and think it is a great product... but I don't quite understand how it people think it is worth so much money as a company.
There's lots of incentive.. there's even a bounty to producing an asterisk plugin for it, but because it's end->end encrypted it's just nowhere near as easy as doing it for MSN messenger.. you first have to extract the keys.
OTOH there's no need for an open skype when SIP is the standard VOIP protocol that works anywhere.
I suspect that you are right on this, especially as Skype recently launched exactly what you describe (minus the PayPal tie in) - http://www.skype.com/company/news/2005/skype_voice services.html
Specifically, Asterisk's IAX protocol takes care of NAT traversal which SIP is pathetic at, and which is becoming an issue in an age when ARIN has no more class C's to give out. It only uses a single port, so it's way easier to pass IAX through a firewall. There are other things that IAX does that SIP can't (seperate caller ID layer, trunking to save bandwidth, lighter weight protocol)
But really, the whole point of a proprietary protocol is vendor lock-in. It's a gamble. If the "proprietary" protocol becomes the standard, is it proprietary anymore (e.g. Atom vs RSS - not a great example but you get the idea)