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."

Comments

Paypal

[Anonymous Coward]

Skype is in for a little surprise if eBay pays with Paypal. Whoops, your account is locked, sorry.

Re:Paypal

[DenDave]

Hrrmm. would they transfer my skypeout balance to my paypal?

LOL!

It's good to see that hot air still sells, dang this is almost like the heady days 97-98!!

2.6 Billion dollars for what? A client list? A gateway to copper lines?

Sheesh!

Re:Paypal

[junklight]

this isn't the dot com bubble though we aren't going to make that mistake again. No - this is a new thing - this is the telecommunications bubble.

Re:Paypal

[Ravatar]

A user count of 52 million (+150,000 per day), and more voice minutes than any other Internet voice communications provider? If you were buying into the industry, why would you compete with Skype when you could buy it?

Re:Paypal

[DenDave]

oh i'm sure it makes sense to somebody...just not to me.

Re:Paypal

[Seumas]

What I don't get is, why does eBay have to buy Skype to allow buyers and sellers to communicate over it? eBay doesn't own the phone company, but I can still talk to buyers and sellers on the phone.

Re:Paypal

[flyingsquid]

If you were buying into the industry, why would you compete with Skype when you could buy it?

But why buy into it at all? Skype isn't a natural extension of eBay's business strategy; it's not even related to what they do. It's sorta like Pizza Hut coming out and announcing they're going to buy Lockheed Martin and build fighter jets. The general tone of the NY Times article is bafflement. Generally speaking, businesses do best when they stick to their core business- when they stick to one thing that they know how to do.

Re:Paypal

[knubile]

If Pizza Hut has fighter jets, just imagine the delivery coverage they would have. "Two large pizzas to alasksa. That'll be 45 minutes or its free."

Re:Paypal

[pnatural]

Eeew. I can tell you, Pizza Hut is just about out of business in Alaska. After all, we have The Best Pizza, Evar.

Re:Paypal

[EiZei]

Generally speaking, businesses do best when they stick to their core business- when they stick to one thing that they know how to do.

Tell that to general electric.

Re:Paypal

[Ralph Wiggam]

You obviously havn't used Skype. I use Skype everyday and I absolutely love it. It has a few small problems, the main one being that the people I call see a caller ID number of 012-345-6789 and a few freak out. I got a SkypeIn phone number for 30 Euros a year and the per minute charges are unbelievably cheap.

Another obnixious thing that Ebay needs to have fixed right away is that when Skype needs to display web content for billing or something, instead of opening a new browser window, it takes a browser that you were doing work in and just loads a new page in it.

-B

Re:Paypal

[Breakfast Pants]

eBay is making more money in their core business than would be reasonable to spend back into improving their core business. Should they just pay dividends? Or do they have the management etc. to make more of their profits than your typical investor could with the dividend? I'm not so sure.

Re:Paypal

[FLEB]

Well, they get to lock in and control the destiny of both the product and the company. Granted, they could do that with some sort of partnership, but I imagine that if eBay can afford it, they're better off to just get the whole thing. Plus, since they own it, they'd be gaining income off paid services, instead of paying Skype to piggyback.

More than just that, they also get an inroad to Skype users, as well as ownership of a decently well-known trademark, which they can use for whatever purpose they want. This has got to be the biggest reason for buying the company, since I can't see it being that costly if eBay developed their own SIP or similar system. IIRC, Skype doesn't have any integral patents on VOIP.

That said, I also see this as a stranger buy than even some of the stuff Google's rolled up in the last few years, but, hey, maybe there's someone at eBay with a vision in mind.

Re:Paypal

[shlashdot]

"Generally speaking, businesses do best when they stick to their core business- when they stick to one thing that they know how to do." Businesses do best when they do what customers are willing to pay for. Your aphorism is a common notion, which I recently realized is just wrong, and which can really hurt a business. This is not my insight - I read it somewhere the other day. To me it was a large a-ha moment. In other words, you have to do what customers want, even if you are not (yet) all that good at it. imo. But then I am not thinking of big business as much as small business.

Re:Paypal

[killjoe]

Better yet why buy it when there are more and more SIP based services every day.

SIP is the future not some proprietary skype protocol.

Re:Paypal

[Ciaran_H]

If you're using Firefox, you can select how you want applications to work with new windows in the Advanced section of the Options/Preferences window.

I don't know if there's a similar thing for IE/Opera/any other browser, though.

Re:Paypal

[nagarjun]

Generally speaking, businesses do best when they stick to their core business- when they stick to one thing that they know how to do. Legendary Fidelity fund manager Peter Lynch called this "diworseification".

Possibilities...

[WillerZ]

I have also heard that live auctions a la Sothebys might also be a possibility.

Well, there's a definitive statement for you....

Re:Possibilities...

[Spacejock]

I can just imagine it: Hundreds of toffs winking and waving hankies at microphones as they try to bid on a piece of art they can't see.

I thought we'd got over the dotcom madness?

Re:Possibilities...

[HawkinsD]

Live auctions? Over the phone? And not just over the phone, but over a cheese-laden peer-to-peer VOIP lash-up?

For things worth actual money?

I bid grgle-snrt I bid zzzzffff No, I bid kkkppp No first f-f-f-f-first! twenty eeeehooonnnggg but wait a wawawa twenty-eight pork

Great idea, boys.

Re:Possibilities...

[Sinus0idal]

Or at a painting sale:

"I bid £100"

Later, after the painting sale, during a thimble sale.. through comes..

"I bid £100"

SOLD.

"Damn QOS!"

Re:Possibilities...

[mollymoo]

The fact is, the art world is a bunch of sheep which will accept any old nonsense as long as the right person did it, or said they liked it.

This is of course entirely different to the stock market, music market, property market, clothing market, software market and any other market with human beings involved.

Re:Possibilities...

[dogma1]

Does not seem to make sense, I have only seen peopel from China using Skype. Seems like they could have done better on their own. I just do not understand how it fits into Ebay?

Re:Possibilities...

[blehlaner]

have you actually used skype before? i think your idea of lousy voice quality come from using yahoo! and msn or other pm tools widely used in USA. peeps from the rest of the world do know of a better product called skype. i only hope that e-bay won't mod skype into some spam/spy/ad-ware.

At least...

[Anonymous Coward]

...now stories that "interesting" about Corp XY going to buy Skype won't gonna make it in between of news that matter that often any more.

Re:At least...

[c0l0]

Except for the obligatory dupe of this one, of course! ;-)

comments

[Anonymous Coward]

A+++++!1111111 would tlak with agin

Skype is a dead-end.

[Seth Finklestein]

Skype is not built on open standards like SIP and remains isolated to its own so-called "Peer to Peer" network. It is to the Gizmo Project as AIM is to Jabber.

Furthermore, eBay has a history of poor human rights concerns and owns PayPal, probably the worst on-line payment site ever created.

I predict more consumer-hostile behavior from eBay and will continue to boycott all of its products.

Re:Skype is a dead-end.

[Catcher80]

PayPal, probably the worst on-line payment site ever created.

As opposed to what? How can you justify this opinion? Worst on-line payment site created, but most used. I can't think of any alternatives, please list some?

Re:Skype is a dead-end.

[Itchy Rich]

Skype is not built on open standards like SIP and remains isolated to its own so-called "Peer to Peer" network. It is to the Gizmo Project as AIM is to Jabber.

Just because it's proprietary doesn't make it a dead-end. You may as well say that every 'open' project will be huge.

Re:Skype is a dead-end.

[airjrdn]

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.

Re:Skype is a dead-end.

[Oscaro]

It is to the Gizmo Project as AIM is to Jabber.

BTW, Gizmo uses open standards, but is not open itself (see ahref=http://www.gizmoproject.com/gizmo-end-user.h tmlrel=url2html-22255http://www.gizmoproject.com/g izmo-end-user.html>).

SIP will (probably) be incorporated into the next gnomeMeeting release.

Re:Skype is a dead-end.

[Anonymous Coward]

Skype and Ebay can do whatever they want. People will still use skype. Heck, I'll use Skype, just because you're complaining about it!

Re:Skype is a dead-end.

[Oscaro]

hm, correct link is
this.

Re:Skype is a dead-end.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't think of alternatives? Then it obviously is the worst one ever created. Ok... the same logic suggests it is also the best one ever created.

Re:Skype is a dead-end.

[birge]

Skype is not built on open standards like SIP and remains isolated to its own so-called "Peer to Peer" network. It is to the Gizmo Project as AIM is to Jabber.

I don't understand your logic. Why is it the automatic death of something to not be based on an open standard? An open standard is nice in some obvious ways, but I'd take something closed that works well over anything else, open or no.

Isn't the POTS system closed? Pretty successful, though, no? And AIM, for that matter, is still doing pretty well. Windows? Closed, sucks, AND very successful.

I think your reports of Skype's imminent demise are premature, given that it's already well recieved and actually quite well designed. I think you may be getting a bit religious-minded about open standards. I probably agree with you that it would be The Right Thing if everything were, but I think you've let the dogma get to you if you think something's going to die just because it isn't based on an open standard. Would that it were the case, though...

Re:Skype is a dead-end.

[hool5400]

eGold works well, but take up is still too low to be a viable alternative.

Re:Skype is a dead-end.

[fatboy]

Isn't the POTS system closed?

No, it is an open standard, regulated by the FCC, 47 CFR 68.3.

See the FAQ

Re:Skype is a dead-end.

[shutdown -p now]

Isn't the POTS system closed?

Is it? I don't think it's a problem to get the specs for it and start manufacturing your own phones, for example. But you can't do it with Skype.

Re:Skype is a dead-end.

[smallguy78]

I feel a bit sorry for someone who dedicates his/her spare time maintaining an anti-paypal site, and forum. Really, is there nothing else you could do? Go to a cash machine, draw out some money and buy some crack for example.

Re:Skype is a dead-end.

[ErroneousBee]

Isn't the POTS system closed?
Nope, International standard.

AIM
Anyone still use it? Its been replaced by jabber and Windows Messenger, and I think messenger will die from neglect eventually.

Windows
Maybe closed, but has clearly documented APIs like DirectX and evens publishes developer kits.

If you want to see what openness gets you, look at TCP/IP, SMTP, HTTP and HTML. These are bigger than any closed standard and often started as a lesser competitor to proprietry protocols (DecNet, SNA, X400, Gopher, PDF, Doc).

Re:Skype is a dead-end.

[e-things]

I agree. Skype no doubt created embarrassment amongst the VoIP folk by showing a small company could solve many of the problems the standard bodies are working on. This said, it's still a long stretch of the imagination to see a commercial VoIP protocol make a long term stand.

History shows that open standards will rule and I for one would put money on SIP compatible phones winning the VoIP race.

Re:Skype is a dead-end.

[Darth_Burrito]

From a person who knows nil about VOIP tech... I remember going to an asterisk presentation last year and the impression I got was that there were serious drawbacks with SIP. I think that's why the asterisk devs came up with their own protocol for use in addition to SIP. This doesn't change the fact that Skype isn't built on open standards, but maybe it explains why they did their own thing instead.

Re:Skype is a dead-end.

[ash.connor]

Well in the UK we use:
http://www.pppay.com/ and http://www.nochex.com/.

Both of which beat Paypal on customer service and on fees.

Re:Skype is a dead-end.

[Penguinoflight]

Just because every proprietary project is a dead-end (a perfectly possible phenemenon considering history) doesn't mean an open project must be large.
Your "insightful" connective is just as bad as saying "Everyone doesn't ride a bike" instead of "Not everyone rides a bike"

False logic isn't insightful in my book, this post needs M2 seriously.

Re:Skype is a dead-end.

[Itchy Rich]

Your "insightful" connective is just as bad as saying "Everyone doesn't ride a bike" instead of "Not everyone rides a bike"

I wasn't saying "proprietary -> failure" and "open standards -> success" are the same thing. I was saying that both are equally rediculous.

Re:Skype is a dead-end.

[Tony Hoyle]

nochex is great... in fact it's a while since I've seen an auction that didn't use it.

They need to go international...

Re:Skype is a dead-end.

[ComputerSherpa]

Actually, as best as can be determined, AIM is the most popular instant-messenger in the world right now. FYI. 195 million registered users, compared with 4 million for Jabber and 155 million for MSN. Not all those are going to be active, but you're still talking out of your a**.

(And since when did HTML "start as a lesser competitor" to PDF or Doc?)

Re:Skype is a dead-end.

[birge]

Nope, International standard.

Ok, I guess I misunderstood what the grandparent meant by open. If you mean "publish APIs and specs" then, for all intents and purposes, AIM is open. By closed, I was talking (perhaps erroneously) about access. The POTS system is (ok, maybe was) closed in the sense that if you want to ring your friend, you eventually need to go over the copper last mile which is owned by his Telco and they are under no obligation to let you or charge a fair price. For example, except for legal problems, telcos could just disallow IM->POTS. In other words, ALL physical networks with single line bottlenecks are closed in a sense. And that's how I thought the grandparent was talking about Skype being closed; they're certainly not going just give away their SkypeOut service (the only interesting part of Skype).

Anyone still use it? Its been replaced by jabber and Windows Messenger, and I think messenger will die from neglect eventually.

I use it. Most people that IM I know use it. I think you're jumping the gun. AIM will live because there's critical mass there. In the end, I use IM software to talk to people, not to massage my beliefs. I care about who uses it, not the openness of their service, whatever that means.

If you want to see what openness gets you, look at TCP/IP, SMTP, HTTP and HTML.

Is that really a fair comparison? HTTP is a protocol existing only in logic; Skype is a service requiring physical assets. Exactly how do you propose somebody do IM->POTS with a system that is open in a meaningful way? Sure, Skype could give you all the APIs you want, but if they don't let you use their network of POTS interfaces, who gives a damn that they inform you of their protocols? I guess I'm just confused at this point over what you all mean when you say 'open'.

Anyway, I'm not being beligerent; I'd honestly appreciate being corrected where I'm missing your point. I do seem to be in the minority here so I assume I'm just misunderstanding what people mean by open as it pertains to a message service.

Re:Skype is a dead-end.

[colenski]

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)

Re:Skype is a dead-end.

[fatcatman]

I'm not saying it's better or worse, I'm just saying it's an alternative.

Like hell. The second you send that money order, BidPay washes their hands of the deal. I once made the mistake of issuing a chargeback against them; they came out with lawyers in full force, threatening lawsuits and collections.

Paypal's buyer protection isn't great, I'll give you that. But at least it exists in some form.

Re:Skype is a dead-end.

[AnyoneEB]

Ummm... PDF is open.

Re:Skype is a dead-end.

[hritcu]

Skype is not built on open standards like SIP and remains isolated to its own so-called "Peer to Peer" network. It is to the Gizmo Project as AIM is to Jabber.

If starting tomorrow (or version 1.4) Skype starts using SIP, would you tell the difference? Would your mother tell the difference then?

Re:Skype is a dead-end.

[Snaller]

Read is fucking link for clarification.

Re:Skype is a dead-end.

[ceejayoz]

Anyone still use it? Its been replaced by jabber and Windows Messenger, and I think messenger will die from neglect eventually.

I've 130 contacts on AIM, 20 on MSN, and 3 on Jabber. Well, 3 on the Google Talk subset of Jabber.

MSN is far more popular than AIM in some areas (Europe, for example), but AIM seems to rule the US (at least in the areas I've lived). Jabber may take off with Google's involvement, especially if they wind up interacting with AIM and MSN users, but before that Jabber was to AIM like the DOS prompt in Windows XP is to Everquest.

Re:Skype is a dead-end.

[petermgreen]

hmm i have no problems using sip from behind my nat without having forwarded any ports.

Re:Skype is a dead-end.

[colenski]

Depends on the device. For example, XTens softphone has nat work-arounds, as does my Snom 190 VoIP hard phone but these are implementations that the manufacturer puts in, its not in the SIP RFC. IAX encompasses NAT-iness right in the RFC so an IAX implementor doesnt have to make a decision whether to support NAT or not, it just *does it*

Re:Skype is a dead-end.

[triso]

If starting tomorrow (or version 1.4) Skype starts using SIP, would you tell the difference? Would your mother tell the difference then?

Mom would say that the sound has gaps in it since the SIP compression is not as good as the proprietary Skype algorithms. I would say, "Don't worry Mom. it will only get better."

Grrrrreat

[Brento]

Great, so now instead of people emailing me about my Ebay auctions, they can call me at any time and ask, "How does that there Tivo thing work anyway? Can I watch HBO if I don't have cable? Can you explain it to me?"

over $1000/user

[El_Muerte_TDS]

How are they going to earn that back from a "free" VoIP service?

Re:over $1000/user

[MarkRose]

You must be new to the Internet -- that doesn't matter.

Re:over $1000/user

[sp3tt]

Well... I'd guess with some kind of advertising scheme. Maybe an additional fee to use it to communicate with the other part of the sale.

Oh, and by the way. I love your documentation for the Unreal2Engine server query protocol, I wrote a modulefor python using it. :)

Re:over $1000/user

[JaseOne]

Skype + PayPal's announcement about micro payments, can you see the correlation?

Re:over $1000/user

[antiaktiv]

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.

Re:over $1000/user

[Anonymous Coward]

It's quite simple:

1 ringy-dingy
2 ringy-dingy
"Hello, this is eBay calling to tell you about some fantastic purchasing opportunities available exclusively to our Skype customers.

"Yes, sir, I understand that you're eating dinner. No, sir, we do not have a no-call list, as we are not governed by-

"Now, sir, there's no need to be rude. I'll let you get back to dinner.

"... and call you back in five minutes. Every five minutes. Until you die."

Re:over $1000/user

[Gorath99]

How are they going to earn that back from a "free" VoIP service?

Especially when Microsoft decides to beef up their voice chat in MSN. I fear that Skype will go the way of ICQ when that happens...

Re:over $1000/user

[42sd]

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.

Re:over $1000/user

[Zemplar]

Skype...the new Napster. At least after eBay gets done with it.

All hail iTunes...and iChat?

Re:over $1000/user

[trezor]

I fear that Skype will go the way of ICQ when that happens...

To be honest ICQ went the way of ICQ when ICQ decided to become a big, fat bloated pig that took half a minute to boot.

And MSN (until recent versions anyway) remained quick and functional. ICQ went down because ICQ went the way of WinAmp 3. No need to blame MS on this.

Re:over $1000/user

[bheer]

MSN (after a round with the Preferences dialog) _remains_ quick and functional, and the latest version (7.5) has kickass PC-to-PC voice, so much so that Skype is actually catching up with it's 1.4 Beta. Now factor in PC-to-phone voice from MS' Teleo acquisition, and it's easy to figure out why Skype, after months of "we're in this for the long haul, not to sell out" is finally selling out -- to an _auctions_ company.

Skype is toast. You heard it here first.

Re:over $1000/user

[pyrros]

That's what I thought at first, but they claimed they have 2 million users online in any given time, not total. The total is 50-60 million, so that kind of explains things.

Re:over $1000/user

[Gorath99]

And MSN (until recent versions anyway) remained quick and functional. ICQ went down because ICQ went the way of WinAmp 3. No need to blame MS on this.

That sounds reasonable, and I'll gladly admit that ICQ made things easier for the competition, but I remain sceptical. ICQ had the network effect on their side, yet people still switched to MSN (back then still Windows Messenger IIRC). Besides, MSN is now just as bloated as ICQ was, yet people still stick to it, even though there are plenty of quick and functional alternatives.

And to get back to the Skype vs MSN issue: most people (at least here in Europe) already use MSN. If they beef up their voice chat, then there'll be no reason anymore for people to install Skype. They already have the network effect on their side.

Re:over $1000/user

[ScuxxletButt]

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.

Re:over $1000/user

[scsscs]

They don't plan to make money from Skype, they plan to make money from the increases in buying and selling they hope the integration of Skype will bring.

Re:over $1000/user

[timeOday]

And you must be new to ebay if you think it isn't profit-oriented. They're greedy suckers.

The question isn't whether ebay will try to make a profit from Skype, but whether Skype will still be worth anything to users when ebay is done with it.

Re:over $1000/user

[shutdown -p now]

MSN still lacks one important feature: offline messaging. I've introduced a few people to Jabber who used MSN exclusively before that, and they were quite surprised that such a thing even exists, and then learnt to use and love it soon afterwards.

Re:over $1000/user

[lanfear1]

That sounds reasonable, and I'll gladly admit that ICQ made things easier for the competition, but I remain sceptical. ICQ had the network effect on their side, yet people still switched to MSN (back then still Windows Messenger IIRC).

Exactly. Within the group of people that I have as contacts, I believe that MSN got its critical mass very quickly amongst "ordinary" Windows users who began using the product that was shipped with Windows.

There were simply too many non ICQ:ers (dare I say "not very tech-savvy people"?) on the MSN network very early, forcing the nerds to switch if they wanted to keep contact with their other friends. [Insert nerd joke here.]

Re:over $1000/user

[baadger]

"His eyes are just big dollar signs."

Yeah gret...anyhoo ...anyone for a "I used KaZaA and Skype before they sold out" t-shirt?

Re:over $1000/user

[OffTheBeatenPath]

Hey, they can always make it up in volume!

Re:over $1000/user

[deinol]

ICQ went the way of ICQ when ICQ decided to become a big, fat bloated pig that took half a minute to boot.

Most people don't care about that sort of thing. No, the reason AIM and MSN started doing better than ICQ I blame entirely on the stupid ICQ#.

user1> What's your ICQ Number?
user2> um... 324353643... 3?
user1> That's lame, my AIM name is joe_blow
user2> wow, that's easy to remember, let me sign up for AIM

I use trillian, I have all 4. I've noticed different social groups have collected on different networks, but ICQ has declined a lot since my college days when it was all there was.

Re:over $1000/user

[Pax00]

I think part of the problem with ICQ, other than the bloat, was that AOL bought them, and continued to use AIM without linking the users together... with the number of new people getting onto AOL every day and automaticly haveing an AIM account, there was no need to push ICQ... also at the same time you had more push on yahoo, and well MSN never really mattered anyway... if ICQ was pushed and debloated then I doubt it would have ever died off the way it did... hell there are features that ICQ had almost from the begining that a few of the IMs out there just not getting...

Re:over $1000/user

[mollymoo]

Profit for the shareholders or profit for the management who execute the buyout?

Re:over $1000/user

[16K Ram Pack]

Do these projections include a bunch of other people deciding this is a good business and getting in there too?

Why do I want Skype? I can have Google Talk, and it uses my Gmail contacts. Simple.

Re:over $1000/user

[MegaFur]

"Yes, sir, I understand that you're eating dinner. No, sir, we do not have a no-call list, as we are not governed by-

FUCK.

And here I was thinking about the possibilities and the future of Skype. This could suck some of the happies out of it pretty fast. I mean, I realize (hope) they won't be doing the telemarketing right away, but in time I'm sure they will.

Re:over $1000/user

[TheRaven64]

Offline messaging was around with ICQ when I started using it in '98. I still find it hard to believe that MSN still hasn't implemented such a trivial feature.

Re:over $1000/user

[pod]

How are they going to earn that back from a "free" VoIP service?

They'll make it up on volume.

Re:over $1000/user

[trezor]

now what's wrong with winamp???

I was specificly referring to WinAmp3, which everyone knows was a slow, useless resource-hog which offered little new features justifying it. Nobody used it, and in the end we got WinAmp5 (2+3) with the best of both worlds (versions), or so was the plan. We got WA3 features, and it was slightly lighter than WA3, even though it wasn't nearly as light as WA2.

Anyway, since you ask. What is wrong with WinAmp? IMO two things:

1. Get a decent music-collection and watch the memory footprint exceed 50MBs. For something as simple as a mp3-player. Not to mention the VM-allocations can bypass 250MB for some odd reason. This is supposed to be a simple music-player for crying out loud. This is insane. The software is bloated and full of leaks.

2. No unicode support. People have been asking about it since version 2, and they still haven't gotten around to implement it. They have been rather active about dismissing the issues and killing threads about the subject in the Winamp forums though.

That's it really. It's become big and bloated, without adding anything but a new skinning engine and a medialibrary. Apart from that, no new features I can think of.

Plus I need my unicode. Even though it's slightly less "pro" than WinAmp, I find that Foobar2000 takes care of all my music needs. And it uses less resources doing so.

Re:over $1000/user

[Anonymous Coward]

You are quite wrong.

Companies like eBay don't buy names, they buy the customers/clients/users. If they wanted a brand, they would create one. I wouldn't be suprised if they renamed the service entirely.

Look at how Yahoo turned Overture into Yahoo! Search Marketing.

After you have the users, it's about conversion. You start charging for service, or selling to them another service they would likely have interest in.

Who is the Skype user? What is it about the user that makes them so valuable to eBay? I'm sure eBay has done the research - or they would not have spent billions.

The one thing they did NOT do is buy the name.

Re:over $1000/user

[insert cool name]

How are they going to earn that back from a "free" VoIP service?

According to The Register one of their ideas is to sell skype customer's details on to direct marketers so they can send them voice spam.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/13/ebay_skype _spam/

That should be pretty popular.

More spam calls

[zrq]

From the article :
.... eBay is also attracted by the idea of letting its buyers and sellers talk to each other via their computers ...

Personally, I'm not sure that I would want eBay buyers and sellers to contact me by voice. For a start, it means that to buy or sell effectively, you would need to be online a lot of the time.
Plus, once they have your Skype address, it would open up the system to SPAM voice calls pestering you to buy more things that you don't want or need.

Re:More spam calls

[Brento]

For a start, it means that to buy or sell effectively, you would need to be online a lot of the time.

I've only done around a hundred auctions, but my experience has been that the questions come 18-24 hours before the auction ends. People looking much earlier than that tend to know exactly what they're looking for and don't ask many questions. People looking later than that are grabbing the first thing they see. People in that 18-24 hour time range, though, seem to ask lots of questions trying to figure out whether or not they should bid.

And of course, these people don't even end up winning the auctions. They're the ones who are new to Ebay, don't understand the concept of sniping, think that they're really going to get a Tivo for the $1 opening bid, and even still, they want to ask questions first about the item.

Re:More spam calls

[Sasquatchtree]

From the article : .... eBay is also attracted by the idea of letting its buyers and sellers talk to each other via their computers ... This whole time I was really hoping to see what google was going to do with this technology with the rumors around the buyout. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/24/121625 8&from=rss

Re:More spam calls

[scsscs]

This feature is not going to be used by, or marketed to, the common seller or buyer. It will be used by, and marketed to, those selling and buying high-end goods like cars, houses and luxury goods where voice communication actually makes sense.

Re:More spam calls

[zrq]

I'd have thought that clear written details of the transaction would be important for high-end goods.

If I write, in text, that the car is roadworthy and has all the relevant certificates, then there is an audit trail published on the web site. If I say, in a voice call, that the car is roadworthy, where is the audit trail ?

Re:More spam calls

[MrKahuna]

You've never been on a Snipe hunt? You don't know what fun you're missing! I do feel for those poor little Snipe though...

Re:More spam calls

[TheRaven64]

Perhaps you could explain sniping.

Sniping is the result of a bug in the implementation of the eBay system that has been around since its inception. With a traditional auction, the auction continues until people have stopped bidding. eBay, however, is modelled after the silent-auction mechanism where an auction ends at a fixed time. This doesn't work well on the Internet, which is why it was not used on other auction site. Other sites extend their auctions so that they do not finish within n minutes of the last bid. This is a nice concept, because it means that if you are outbid, you have time to think about whether you want to continue to bid. It has the side-effect that people tend to place their bids earlier, allowing the final price to be approximated by potential bidders more than 10 minutes before the end of the auction.

Re:More spam calls

[cosmol]

I don't really use ebay much at all so I may have no idea what I am talkin about but...

I think that sniping is a result of widespread misunderstanding of ebay's auction procedure. Unlike a traditional auction, on ebay you are supposed to name your max price right from the start. If you bid $100 on that tivo that has an opening bid of $1, you will only pay $1 assuming no one else bids. If someone bids $50 on that same tivo you will end up paying 51$ assuming the "bid increment" is a dollar. The idea is that you don't have to constantly one-up everyone elses bid, because the system does it for you based on your decided-upon maximum price.

Re:More spam calls

[Mechcozmo]

However, it could also cut down on the amount of SCAM on eBay.

Re:More spam calls

[gauauu]

Thank you. Every time someone describes sniping, I wonder, do they just not understand the way ebay is supposed to work? Is there something you and I are missing, or all those snipers just idiots?

Wow

[squiggleslash]

Does this mean you'll be able to communicate with eBay and PayPal "customer service" by phone?

Maybe not...

Re:Wow

[grazzy]

I actually called Paypal support from Sweden. It was quite a experience.

I quickly learnt why you guys over there are so anti everything-support. If that is what is to come even here I'm sure swedes will start having office-shootings soon too.

Here we go again

[pcgamez]

Yet another company purchasing another completely unrelated company simply because they feel the need to dump their cash somewhere. In te end, one company always ends up dragging the other down.

Re:Here we go again

[bloodredsun]

but at least they're paying with a telephone number(2-600-000-000)!

Re:Here we go again

[fedorfedor]

Yet another company purchasing another completely unrelated company simply because they feel the need to dump their cash somewhere. In te end, one company always ends up dragging the other down.

Yup, my first thought was "we're now a floor wax and a dessert topping!"

No comment.

Re:Here we go again

[caffeinex36]

Not sure why this is modded insightful when it is a totally brainless comment with no backing.

give us some examples? I'm sure there are some, but what is the reasoning behind it?

in business this is whats called venturing into vertical markets. It's sometimes GOOD for business. Ebay is a good example. Although people may disagree because its cool to hate paypal, but look at ebay and paypal? completely vertical markets, and it works.

Re:Here we go again

[m50d]

That's how companies grow. Well, no, they can expand their core business, but ebay has the online auction market pretty much sewn up. For some reason it's not good enough for shareholders for the company to be turning a profit, they have to be seen to be expanding.

Re:Here we go again

[16K Ram Pack]

Ebay and Paypal makes sense. Paypal allows small sellers to take credit cards. It adds something to Ebay.

You can have occassionally good mergers, but this looks like a complete turkey. Where's the synergy?

Re:Here we go again

[TobascoKid]

Although people may disagree because its cool to hate paypal, but look at ebay and paypal? completely vertical markets,

Not really, as paypal's main reason for existence is paying for online auctions (ie eBay). Sure, paypal has some use beyond that, but you could at least see a link between paypal and ebay.

It's a lot harder to see what Skype has to do with online auctions. What's next, eBay search?
eBay mail(especially as they already have an email like function in my ebay)? ebay news & weather? Maybe it is like others have said and that the link is with PayPal's micropayment system than eBay.

Re:Here we go again

[mspohr]

I agree. Skype worked well and was reasonable it it's terms. I can only see ebay screwing it up. Time to start looking for another VOIP provider. Fortunately, I (and other users) are not locked in and it will be easy to switch when they start messing it up.

Re:Here we go again

[afabbro]

He's right - this is a pretty sketchy idea. I polled my MBA classmates and every one of them was saying WTF.

You want examples? The whole "diworsification" trend of the 70s and 80s. GM bought a satellite company (Hughes) and a data processing firm (EDS), for instance. See how well that worked out for them. The idea was that they'd use these businesses to ride out the slumps in the economic cycle...in reality, all it did was divert management's attention from their core business.

All of the derived wisdom in business is that you find what your company is great at and put everything behind it. Read Good to Great.

eBay buying Paypal makes sense because there are obvious synergies - you buy something on eBay and pay for it with Paypal (and Paypal was also profitable). Sometimes big acquisitions make sense - Oracle buying Peoplesoft and Seibel, or Ford buying Hertz (though after 15+ years they're now ditching it). Sometimes the deals are more of a stretch...e.g., FedEx/Kinko's and UPS/Mailboxes are both based on a very specific strategy and set of assumptions.

eBay buying Skype makes zero sense to me. If eBay had bought Christie's or Sotheby's, I might understand...but buying Skype is (a) reaching waaaay over to a completely different market where the synergies are very speculative, and (b) investing in an unproven, unprofitable venture with a LOT of cash, reminiscent of the dot-com days.

Re:Here we go again

[doughrama]

I'm not sure how to take your comment. Given the attitude I often see here on Slashdot regarding companies and their desire/need to make money, I'm going to assume you are in the camp of not understanding why making a profit isn't "enough" for shareholders.

The reason that simply making a profit isn't enough is because shareholders buy their shares at a multiple of what the company is actually worth based on their current or potential profit. Often times, as is the case with Ebay, that multiple is really high. Ebay's current share price is currently trading at roughly 57 times earning.

People will buy ebay shares at this price because they speculate that eBay will be able to grow it's earnings a lot in a relatively short period of time.

What it all boils down to is risk/reward. I consider Ebay to be very low risk company, in regards to staying in business. However at their current multiple I believe they are a very high risk company for investing. So if you are going to purchase shares in Ebay, it's a prerequisite that you are going to expect/demand that the company at the very least "try" to grow it's earnings.

My personal opinion is that Ebay buying Paypal was great for Ebay and for Paypal. But Ebay buying Skype makes no sense to me. Hell, I see more opportunities with AOL/TW than I do here... And we all know how well that worked out.

It's an interesting case though. I generally like both companies, and in my household both Skype and Ebay are used on a weekly basis, if not daily. However I don't like this deal, there are a couple of negative issues that this deal presents.

Issue 1: "Buy what you know" It's a good rule of thumb, not a law. I know ebay, I know paypal, I know skype, I know ebay-paypal, but I don't know ebay-paypal-skype. The deal doesn't make sense. But hey what do I know, I'm dumb. The management team at ebay must be much smarter than me, especially at running their own business. Not that I'm suggesting this, but the top management at Enron were "The Smartest Guys In The Room" too.

Of course, I believe that ebay's management is probably pretty good. Well, no I don't, but I don't have any justifications for thinking they are not all that great until this skype deal appeared. In reality, I've always felt that Ebay's management was probably mediocre and was blessed by having a dominant position in a market that was very difficult to screw up. Hence making them look like rock stars to investors. The purchase of Paypal, was a no brainer (even mediocre management could see that.) But the Skype deal just doesn't make sense. Which leads to issue 2.

Issue 2: What's the purchase of a seemingly completely unrelated company really say about Ebay? To me this is a dark cloud. What I think it says is Ebay doesn't think it can grow it's earnings fast enough to placate it's shareholders by doing what it's currently doing. It says to me that Ebay doesn't have a clue what it should do with it's current cash pile. So they went looking for an opportunity. And the best they could come up with is Skype? Again, from where I stand it's a completely unrelated business, and it's a stretch to link their business's in anyway. So, by Ebay throwing so much money at Skype see several possibilities. Ebay's management is not mediocre, but complete morons. Ebay is totally desperate to find a new source of revenue and is willing to throw as much cash as it takes "fix" it's problems. Or management is actually made up of a bunch of business rock stars and have found an opportunity that makes 2-3 billion dollars seem like chump change.

I vote that management are desperate morons. But like I said earlier "What do I know, I'm dumb."

Time will tell I suppose.

Re:Here we go again

[MKalus]

The idea was that they'd use these businesses to ride out the slumps in the economic cycle...in reality, all it did was divert management's attention from their core business.

So what about GE?

Re:Here we go again

[Sefert]

This logic seems good to me. But what about companies like Virgin, which is made up of incredibly diverse companies, all of which make boat loads of money? He just hires smart guys to run each company and sits back. Surely Branson is pretty recession proof as a result. It's not like airlines have anything to do with music. Or cell phones. (Well, music and cell phones are maybe converging a little bit, but not much...)

Re:Here we go again

[afabbro]

GE's business is breeding and deploying great managers. Seriously. If you ask "what is GE good at?" then that's the answer. They devote enormous resources to identifying and grooming talent (which is why so many CEOs at other companys are ex-GE people). No other company that I'm aware of spends as much money on developing managerial talent.

(eBay sure doesn't ;)

potential for social engineering

[laurensv]

One of the reasons eBay has is that they can use Skype to let buyers and sellers talk to each other; but my eBay name and Skype name aren't the same. If some contacts buyer/seller through Skype with eBay screenname as Skype name, they're is going to be some potential for social engineering.

Re:potential for social engineering

[bluesoul88]

Because, you know, there's never any social engineering on eBay before this acquisition. Some of the more elaborate scams I've ever seen have been on eBay; this explains their 24-hour fraud team.

Skype

[Trick Kid]

Clearly eBay should be made to bid for it ;-)

Link to the announcement

[Rik Sweeney]

Here's the link to their announcement

what a stretch

[idlake]

BBC speculates that eBay will use Skype to allow sellers and bidders to communicate via voice;

They can do that already, for free, using any of the IM and VoIP solutions that are out there. eBay didn't have to buy Skype for that. I suspect most sellers just don't want to be bothered, otherwise they'd list an IM address and phone number.

I'm not even sure why Skype is considered so valuable; the technology is commonplace, and VoIP-to-POTS gateways are offered by many companies. And between the Telcos and Microsoft, any competitor is going to be squashed.

Re:what a stretch

[DingerX]

Alright -- first off, Ebay's gotta be out of their mind if they think Skype can somehow help as a "Convergent" technology. It probably can't. Just glance through this -- VoIP auctions combine the best of all worlds: the incomprehensibility of people who don't share a native tongue, the time constraints of a live auction, and the anonymity and uncertainty of the internet.

So why buy skype? Why shell out 1.3 billion bucks for a piece of software, especially one so commonplace as Skype?

Skype is a great piece of software, but no doubt better can be made. But Skype has other things going for it: A) It's got reasonably secure encryption -- unlike practically every other chat and VoIP client out there. B) It's great at getting around firewalls C) As decentralized as it is, it requires minimal resources -- it hits one IP in Denmark and it's on its way. D) It has 40+ million users, of which 3 million are online at any given time, and the numbers are growing.

So skype delivers a lot of regular users at minimal cost. Heck, you don't even need to run adds on the Skype client itself, if you control the help, community and download pages. Controlling the #1 PC-to-PC VoIP client out there gives access to all kinds of non-obvious revenue streams, very few of which have anything to do with auctions.

Re:what a stretch

[idlake]

A) It's got reasonably secure encryption -- unlike practically every other chat and VoIP client out there.

You cannot trust encryption in closed source software.

As decentralized as it is, it requires minimal resources -- it hits one IP in Denmark and it's on its way.

How is "one IP in Denmark" decentralized? Ohphone is better than that (IP-to-IP).

It has 40+ million users, of which 3 million are online at any given time, and the numbers are growing.

Yeah, and those 40+ million users are a couple of clicks away from installing the next great thing.

Controlling the #1 PC-to-PC VoIP client out there gives access to all kinds of non-obvious revenue streams, very few of which have anything to do with auctions.

I think it's going to be short-lived. Congrats to the Skype founders for getting out while the company was still worth something.

Re:what a stretch

[SpinyNorman]

Ebay's gotta be out of their mind if they think Skype can somehow help as a "Convergent" technology.

Agreed, so the expected synergy is most likely going to be with PayPal (owned by eBay).

Re:what a stretch

[bentfork]

From http://www2.ebay.com/aw/uk/200509.shtml#2005-09-12 094345
You can include your Skype ID in your About Me page. ... We'll be working with you, ... to thoughtfully work out the details of how eBay and Skype will interact, including any policy changes that may be required.
So they are going to add a button to 'talk' with seller.

This is going to work because skype is _Really_ easy to use. Napster easy. I know non techie 50yr old mac users who use skype without any trouble.

Re:what a stretch

[Snaller]

What IP number in Denmark and why?

Re:what a stretch

[hritcu]

3 million are online at any given time

BTW, it's only two million. But what does this mean? Usually that they installed Skype, and their computer is running and has an internet connection. This tells you nothing about how many calls are being made every second, and how many of these calls are not for free. This is like a POTS operator saying that 99.9% of their users are online. Should I be impressed then by Skype's >3.7% of users online at any given instant?

Online Phone card type thing?

[pkboy]

Paypal's Micropayments and Skype? Probably convenient for quick overseas calls to POTS lines...

What a shame...

[xeon4life]

Yet another up-and-coming technology bought out by corporate mammoths.

I remember when even eBay was a fledgling company, trying to find it's market.

Re:Hmmm...

[brajesh]

As a metter of fact, it does

This is bad, because:

[TA]

With a large US company owning Skype I think we can take for granted that getting SkypeIn sorted out with the telecomm authorities of smaller, European countries will simply not happen. I expect Skype will now grow much more US-oriented than before - I simply can't imagine why Ebay would bother with, or even understand those Euro-centric problems.

Time to start looking seriously at the existing competition, small as it is.

Re:This is bad, because:

[Gorath99]

I simply can't imagine why Ebay would bother with, or even understand those Euro-centric problems.

I don't know in what tiny European country you live, but mine has its own ebay. If they think that that particular market is lucrative enough for them, even though there is plenty of competition, then I'm sure that they consider the telecom market lucrative enough too.

In short: I wouldn't start worrying just yet :-)

Re:This is bad, because:

[peterzen]

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/)

Re:This is bad, because:

[DZign]

Marktplaats is no competition for them anymore as they also bought that one..
probably because it was too popular and some things are sold on marktplaats and are hardly offered on ebay.nl

Re:This is bad, because:

[Gorath99]

True, but it was a major competitor back then. Just goes to show that they do care about small European countries (or more specifically, the money to be made from said countries). They spent an insane amount of money (280 million dollars for marktplaats alone) to get their foot in the Dutch market.

Thank You for Killing Skype, eBay

[Vapor8]

Great, another useful tool brought down to its knees by a company with a need to buy something 'sexy' without an intelligent business plan. Thank you eBay! Ugh....

Not 2.6 billion, but 4.1 billion.

[Anonymous Coward]

"EBay plans initially to pay $1.3 billion in cash and $1.3 billion in stock and to make a further payout of up to $1.5 billion by 2008 or 2009 if financial targets are met, giving the deal a total value of up to $4.1 billion, the source said."

Here, check this out:
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?typ e=technologyNews&summit=&storyid=2005-09-12T081656 Z_01_HO227963_RTRIDST_0_TECH-SKYPE-EBAY-DC.XML

Skype was already naff....

[agulliford]

... as it is does not use the accepted SIP VOIP standard, nor does it interoperate with other VOIP providers.

Get yourself a real VOIP provider that uses SIP.

Nuts n' Gum... together at last!

[Anonymous Coward]

What a bizarre combination, auctions and VoIP telephony. I can't but help think that this is part of the current fad of big net companies buying up the small-but-cool app stuff?

I mean you can see where Google's going with their purchases, but Yahoo with Konfabulator and eBay with Skype seem to be pointing in a new direction of desktop application acquisition.

Re:Nuts n' Gum... together at last!

[Anonymous Coward]

"desktop application acquisition"

You mean like Google buying Picasa?

In other news, eBay raises fees 45%

[Zemplar]

For that kind of cash, eBay could have developed an in-house solution at a fraction of the price. Oh well, time to raise the Buyer's and Seller's rates on eBay, again...

Re:In other news, eBay raises fees 45%

[AutopsyReport]

It's Skype's customer base that eBay is after, not it's software.

Re:In other news, eBay raises fees 45%

[Zemplar]

Perhaps, but eBay could have simply integrated a new Skype-like eBay product on eBay/PayPayl and drawn some of Skype's customers and created new customers. Ideally the simplicity of the integrated product would have drawn Skype's existing customers at a fraction of the cost. Either way, being a cash/stock deal, the out-of-pocket cash price to purchase the customers is only about half of what other /. posters suggest [~$650/user] and reasonable to purchase an existing customer base and eliminate the competition at the same time.

Oh well, if you can't join 'em, buy 'em.

Re:In other news, eBay raises fees 45%

[aftermath09]

definitely, but that's why this purchase makes no sense.

How will ebay leverage this user base? When (not if) ebay raises the prices on skype services, how many customers will they lose? skype's attraction has always been it's price, and it's ease of use. Just curious to see how these will change under ebay.

ultimately, where does ebay see the value in skype, and thus willing to pay the 2.5 - 4.1 bn?

Thanks for the tip!

[jcr]

I think I need to buy some puts on E-Bay.

-jcr

Re:Hmmm...

[brajesh]

Skype for Linux requires glibc 2.3.3 or greater and Qt 3.2 or greater. ever heard of FAQs.
I am not advocating skype here, but do check your facts before posting.

angling for the unknown

[CousinLarry]

I think the main parallel to find in comparing the recent tech acquisition spree to that of 1999/2000 is that companies are applying the "buy now figure it out later" synergy strategy again. I think a lot of these companies are seeing a vague future for themselves as desktop application providers in Web X.0 -- but they are scrambling in a land grab on search, voip, mobile...I mean, when Google buys something as fad-ish as dodgeball.com and ebay gets into voip, to me it signals speculation and hedging on these companies' parts. They have no clue what will work and what will not -- and eBay shareholders should be upset that eBay is gambling billions on speculative technologies.

Man I wish I invented Skype...now for my Epiphany

[digitaldc]

The next invention will be a solar powered house and car combo station.

Is eBay the new Google?

[RyoShin]

Google has been known lately for snatching up many things that have become rather popular.

eBay, for the most part, has stayed under the radar (at least, as far as corporate purchases are concerned.) However, even before they started buying things, they already had their hand in every consumer goods market with the U.S. and every other country (though not directly.)

Then they bought PayPal (what, a year ago?). This transaction made plenty of sense, as PayPal was used to pay for many of the auctions on eBay.

But now that eBay is getting Skype, are we seeing a clever purchase or the beginning of a buy-frenzy? This layman cannot see an overall connection between Skype and eBay/PayPal (aside from being general commerace tools); but that doesn't mean they can't buy Skype. And if they purchase Skype, what might they put their grubby mitts on next?

Re:What is so special about Skype?

[TA]

There is other software out there. Some can do some of what Skype does, other software can do other parts of what Skype does. But can it do all of it?

- Skype has little or no problems with firewalls. Most workplaces wouldn't be able to use Skype if it wasn't for this.
- It's not only PC-to-PC, which indeed is a dime a dozen. It's also PC-to-phone and even phone-to-PC. You can get your own phone number(s) in some countries, e.g. get yourself a phone number in some other country and your friends there can phone you at local rates instead of international.
- With the latest version and its forwarding feature (still only in the Windows version) it's even phone-to-phone as well.
- Skype's PC-to-phone is cheap. I can go to the other side of the world and phone my mum or anyone at home for close to nothing, with a USB stick w/Skype and an Internet cafe.

There are other applications out there that can do part of what Skype can do, but it's either
- missing some features, or
- not as good PC-to-phone country coverage, or
- more expensive PC-to-phone rates, or
- none or extremely (even more than Skype) limited availability of phone numbers (what Skype calls SkypeIn).
- a smaller user base (which is a self-strengthening point)

In other words, a lot of stuff come together in Skype. The only point against I can think of is the missing interoperability with other software because of the proprietary protocols.

Re:$2.6 BILLION!!!!!

[everphilski]

Yeah, but Skype has a client base... they are buying the customers as much as they are buying the infrastructure

Except it doesn't bloody work!

[Col. Bloodnok]

At least not on any distro that I've tried it on with this ThinkPad + USB headset.

Unlikely to ever work until it gets proper ALSA support.

Re:Except it doesn't bloody work!

[brajesh]

Skype help page claims it to work with ALSA. something about USB headset and distros. No nitpicking here, but may be you haven't tried enough.

Re:Except it doesn't bloody work!

[Col. Bloodnok]

Yes, I've tried all the usual hacks found on the Skype linux forum plus some link interposing trickery of my own, to try to understand what's going wrong. I reached the point of deciding to wait for the next version before wasting any more time on it. The USB headset is a separate issue, it doesn't work with the built in devices either.

I'd say that I'm pretty disillusioned with their linux support.

Re:Oh, get real.

[jcr]

LOL! I love it when the same post gets modded "insightful "and "troll" within five minutes!

-jcr

Will SKype executables remain multi-plaform?

[Anonymous Coward]

Paypal and eBay tend towards M$ lock-in. A large concern in throwing their hat in with those two would be the risk of marginalizing non-MS platforms.

Also, remember that Skype is not an open protocol. You cannot write your own client should support for your platform be discontinued.

Re:Will SKype executables remain multi-plaform?

[baadger]

MSN Messenger isn't an open protocol either (The recent matter of MS opening up some API's for it and some other of their goodies is good, but doesn't count). This hasn't stopped FOSS implementations of the protocol based on reverse engineering.

At the moment Skype is a good product with a geek (& Joe Noob) friendly image so there's no incentive to want to create an alternative client. Should Skype drop a platform though, i'm sure atleast some of this enthusiasm for the service would be sucked into open source.

Even if Skype itself were to fail on platform X and noone was to create openSkype it should have generated enough buzz over VoIP by now to get open source to start picking up the slack.

Re:Will SKype executables remain multi-plaform?

[Tony Hoyle]

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.

Re:Will SKype executables remain multi-plaform?

[apa666]

Skype is superior to SIP in a couple of ways, most notably perhaps the ability to traverse NAT on both ends without fiddling with port forwarding or UPnP. This is a pretty significant issue for non-geeks as NAT routers are becoming more and more prevalent.

Re:Will SKype executables remain multi-plaform?

[MsGeek]

Skype works best on Linux, amazingly enough.

For some reason, Skype on Windows cuts out a lot. On Linux, it's as clear and smooth as if I'm in the same room as the person I'm conversing with.

Too bad it's proprietary/closed source. At least it's free as in gratis.

Re:Will SKype executables remain multi-plaform?

[petermgreen]

MSN is a cracked protocol and MS seem to have given up fighting the alternative clients.

whereas the SKYPE protocol afaict hasn't been cracked yet maybe it will be one day maybe not who knows.

Communications?

[_LORAX_]

Yeah, because when i think communications that don't suck I think of e-Bay. This from the company that isn't a bank, isn't an auction company, and now isn't a phone company ... or at least that's what the regulators will be told.

E-Bay's use of communications suck all of their products and services are closed products, Skype is no different in that respect, but I see no way that this will improve their buisness. I really can't wait to get back to the closed days of compuserve 195782,1124!

Oracle is buying Siebel for $5.8 billion

[jamshedji]

Shows how glacial \. is.

Re:$2.6 BILLION!!!!!

[sleeper0]

What on earth gives you the impression that a US$2600M purchase of a services company is a technology/software acquisition? I am just as confounded by this purchase as the next guy, but suggesting donating money to fund open source development of similar features satisfies the same goals is silly. If ebay announced they were buying comcast would you post that's silly, if they give me $100 bucks I can show them how to put television on a thick wire too?

Communication

[SecularG]

Perhaps eBay is hoping to close the communication barrier between seller/buyer. Personally I have never had trouble with buyer/seller, but this may be good for those people who are afraid to buy online because they can not actually talk/see the person.

$2.6 Billion!!! my ass

[netdur]

and just for "to allow sellers and bidders to communicate via voice" holy crap, imagine what SIP client Apple or IBM can create for $1 Billion just wondering, if skype worth $2.6 Billion so how much windows os worth?

what currency?

[Anonymous Coward]

2.6 billion..

thats in Yen right?

seriously why dont ebay hire some people to make a SIP compliant client + service...

the only reason why skype is doing well at the moment is because SIP hasn't taken of yet...

Re:what currency?

[16K Ram Pack]

Do you own a toy shop? ;)

Ebay is not an auction company

[OpenYourEyes]

I suspect that part of the confusion is that we think of ebay as an acution company, just like we used to think of google as a search company or Microsoft as a PC OS company.

It sounds to me like ebay is trying to transform itself into a "business solutions provider" company. Starting a small business? Sell your stuff using ebay with "buy it now". Want to accept credit cards and do other business banking? We can do that. Want to offer a toll-free (or non-toll-free) number to your customers? We can do that, too.

I would not be overly surprised if they went after Quicken or a competitor next. Possibly even a shipping or storage company, too (but less likely since those aren't virtual).

Re:Ebay is not an auction company

[lastninja]

I think you are on to something, here is an article in the economist http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm? Story_id=4054876 where their CEO alludes to this. Not all people use eBay as a place to sell their old TV, some actually run their entire business via eBay.

Re:Ebay is not an auction company

[AndreyF]

I completely agree. The problem with this, however, is that it will put eBay into competition with Google really, really soon... and Google will pwn eBay like a little gurl.

Re:Hmmm...

[TCM]

Seriously, what good is a closed software-only "telephony" application when VoIP is the latest craze? With SIP, I can use an adapter to connect any common phone. With Asterisk I have a complete PBX that I can program to do anything, from call routing to voicemail to menus to different behaviour based on callerid and whatnot.

Sitting in front of a PC and being able to talk to someone is so 1999.

Large Techs Making VOIP Plays

[tabdelgawad]

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.

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-0 0000e2511c8.html

reasonably secure encryption

[wiredog]

How do we know? Has anyone done a serious test of it? They claim AES-256, but how do we know?

As to the decentralization, if that one sever in Denmark goes down, so does the entire network (since no one will be able to log on.)

It is the best solution if you have to be able to get through firewalls and NAT.

Re:reasonably secure encryption

[Brian Stretch]

Skype's encryption is good enough for the ChiComs to want to block it. If it can piss off the world's largest dictatorship it's good enough for me.

_please_ mod parent down .....

[mcbevin]

You don't honestly believe that 'internal memo' from ebay is real do you? Seems rather incredible to me - no company is so idiotic as to ban talking at desks at work, and the way it is written is so ridiculous as if the writer was trying to make obvious that its a joke.

In any case, I don't see what it has to do with 'human rights concerns'.

Other posters have sufficiently rebutted your claim that PayPal is the 'worst on-line payment site ever created', and your Gizmo plug, so I'll resist from arguing those points ....

The Key is not Ebay but Paypal.

[donnacha]

Ebay's interest in Skype has nothing to do with augmenting their auctions with calls between buyers and sellers. This is about taking those (alleged) 50 million non-paying Skypers and giving them an easy, more attractive way of paying for individual calls rather then stumping up $5. Pretty much everyone has a Paypal account and this sort of tie-up would get them using both Paypal and Skype more, with people more willing to leave cash sitting in their Paypal accounts because "I might need it for calls". This would consolidate Paypal's dominant position, something Ebay are probably anxious to do in the wake of rumours of a Google e-payment service - most people will only really bother with one payment service and, if it covers their phone calls too, sticking with Paypal will be a no-brainer.

The real killer argument for the Paypal/Skype tie-up is, however, the possibilities it opens up for a whole new generation of premium phone services and the recent repositioning of PayPal, missed by many, strongly suggests that Whitman et al realize this - after years of holding back the whole idea of micro-payments, they finally decided to granularize Paypal's fee scale, making smaller transactions viable. Before, you had to pay 30c + 3% of every transaction, leaving you with 67c from a dollar sale. Now, they are willing to take 5c + 5% instead, leaving you with 90c.

This is huge news because it makes viable a whole new layer of services. I don't think the timing of that introduction is a coincidence. I believe that Paypal are preparing the ground so that anyone who wants to set up a premium number can do so via Skype - if someone fancies themselves as a fortune teller, a Windows guru, a phone psychologist, a language translator, anything at all that can be conveyed over the phone, Skype will allow them to receive calls for which they can charge whatever they want per minute, taken directly from the customers Paypal account.

The rakes that the traditional telcos cream from premium calls are obscene, resulting in unattractive overall rates, crippling a potentially huge homebrew industry before it even began. Seriously, how many of you regularly turn to premium phone-lines when you have a problem? I can definitely understand how talking to another human being, one expert at tackling my particular problem, could be useful - the current cost, however, takes that option right out of contention. Generally, too, a premium service can only serve one country, barely giving it room to breathe market-wise.

A Skype/Paypal solution would be international, meaning a techie in Bombay could build a reputation for solving computer problems for customers in Baltimore, more easily than getting the kid down the road to drop by and certainly more cheaply than phoning Compuworld or Apple. It would also allow that kid in Bombay to keep a meaningful percentage of his per-minute fee, allowing him to keep it low. You would soon have a massive market of providers, ranging from amateurs to highly experienced professionals, all promoting their services via websites and forums, all adapting their charges and services to market conditions. By building the charging mechanism right into Skype, Paypal would find itself sitting happily in the middle of a new explosion of cash transactions.

Just like Ebay did.

Re:The Key is not Ebay but Paypal.

[TA]

I think you're definitely on to something.

And you also got me worried. It wouldn't be surprising if eBay will now limit SkypeOut/SkypeIn charges to Paypal only. It even sounds obvious. Good for eBay/Paypal, a major step backwards from everyone else's standpoint (including mine, I have been perfectly happy using Mastercard to buy my SkypeOut credit).

Re:The Key is not Ebay but Paypal.

[mikrorechner]

A Skype/Paypal solution would be international, [...]

I don't know about that - here in Germany, premium phone services are heavily regulated (why? I don't really know; I guess just too many crooks abused them and found too many fools to pay them).

I assume Germany is not the only country in the world where this is the case.

But for the US and other less regulated economies, your idea sounds feasible.

Re:The Key is not Ebay but Paypal.

[belthezar]

I think you have the most insightful comment I have read so far, and the most plausible explanation for this purchase. That really does sound like a completely untapped market possibility. Who wouldn't want to be known as an expert in their niche field? Combine all the user ratings and feedback that eBay uses so that callers can rate these experts ..... well the more I think about it, the more sense it makes! It will be interesting to see what actually shakes out in the next few months, and to see if anyone was really close to the mark of why they bought Skype.

Re:The Key is not Ebay but Paypal.

[donnacha]

I think you're definitely on to something.

And you also got me worried. It wouldn't be surprising if eBay will now limit SkypeOut/SkypeIn charges to Paypal only. It even sounds obvious. Good for eBay/Paypal, a major step backwards from everyone else's standpoint (including mine, I have been perfectly happy using Mastercard to buy my SkypeOut credit)

Over the years, I've developed an increasingly pragmatic approach to Internet services; I've had a Paypal account pretty since it began but have never been their most enthusiastic user, mainly because I hated the sneaky way in which they hid the stealthy profit they make on currency exchange - they made it absolutely impossible to find out, via their website what their actual rates were, meaning you never knew what you would actually be paying for an item, a fairly basic requirement for commerce you would imagine. Things may have improved by now but it's not something I have any more time to waste on.

I actually decided not to buy a Flickr account about a year ago because Paypal was the only form of payment they accepted and the Flickr team's much-vaunted technical genius apparently didn't extend to being able to set up their own merchant account.

Lately, though, I have mellowed and I'm more willing to except that, in an online economy, successful business models often have to jettison customer service and human-to-human interactions. I'm not saying that this is A Good Thing, but that it is, possibly, a necessary thing; Paypal's gungho and crudely targetted freezing of some users accounts is, in a sense, the price we pay for having an online payment service available to practically everyone.

Another example is a server company I'm using, LayeredTech. I spent much of this morning banging my head against their incredibly poor customer service, opening tickets to find out why a yes-or-no question I submitted a week ago hasn't been answered, only to receive curt emails chastising me for opening duplicate tickets but still no answer to my simple original question! Phoning their support number gets you put through to a machine and, of course, that's frustrating but my point is that, ultimately, the low cost of the server makes such frustrations worthwhile. Sure, it would be great to find a place that was both cheap and had a customer server ethic but that's rarely possible. Given a choice between the two, most people go for low prices, not because they are innately cheap bastards, but because a substantially cheaper servers open up new levels of financial viability and possibility regarding the use those servers, particularly for creating free services which, in turn, create new waves of possibility for others.

If Paypal is, as I envisaged in my original post, planning to open up an entirely new market of homebrew premium phone services, allowing anyone, anywhere to sell their time/expertise on a per minute basis, well, using a Paypal account to access those services (or even become a provider myself) is a price I'm willing to pay.

Re:The Key is not Ebay but Paypal.

[donnacha]

A Skype/Paypal solution would be international, [...]

I don't know about that - here in Germany, premium phone services are heavily regulated (why? I don't really know; I guess just too many crooks abused them and found too many fools to pay them).

I assume Germany is not the only country in the world where this is the case.

But for the US and other less regulated economies, your idea sounds feasible.

Mikrorechner, you need to think logically about what you just said. In particular, understand that we are talking about the Internet here.

In Germany you have heavily regulated premium phone services and, you are quite right, such services are heavily regulated in almost every country. This has created a cost burden that has prevented such services from extending their reach much further than sex services for people too socially retarded to talk to real girls/boys.

The Internet, however, does an end-run around both local regulations and geographic limitations and, provided an accessible and affordable infrastructure is put in place, premium phone services of all types suddenly become viable.

It is precisely because German premium phone services are over-burdened with regulations and telco costs that Paypal are going to spark a revolution.

Local regulations are no longer relevant unless a country is willing to erect something similar to the Great Firewall of China. Do you really think that Angela Merkel is going to start blocking VOIP traffic into Germany? Do you really think that German companies won't want a slice of this new industry?

Re:The Key is not Ebay but Paypal.

[donnacha]

I think you have the most insightful comment I have read so far, and the most plausible explanation for this purchase. That really does sound like a completely untapped market possibility. Who wouldn't want to be known as an expert in their niche field? Combine all the user ratings and feedback that eBay uses so that callers can rate these experts ..... well the more I think about it, the more sense it makes! It will be interesting to see what actually shakes out in the next few months, and to see if anyone was really close to the mark of why they bought Skype.

Do you know, I hadn't even considered Ebay's expertise with user ratings, feedback and running such systems on a massive scale but, yes, you're absolutely right, this further bolsters the likelihood that this is what they are planning to do. Clearly, their initial announcement's focus on using VOIP to enhance auctions is a complete smokescreen, designed to buy them more time.

I had been incredibly cynical about all the rumors regarding various companies buying Skype but when I heard Ebay mentioned the other day, something just clicked and I knew it was going to happen. The interesting thing is that none of the newspaper pundits made the Paypal connection but, instead, suggested that ebay auctions or even craig's list would benefit from Skype integration. Ridiculous.

The most interesting thing is that Ebay's stock tanked 4% on the rumors and, unless the market has cottoned on to the Paypal possibilities, it will probably dip even more today. If I had money with a US stockbroker right now, I would definitely buy Ebay stock, this is going to be that rarest of things: a new Internet market that will generate pure profit off the back of an existing infrastructure and marketshare that it will be impossible for competitors to replicate. This is going to be huge.

Re:The Key is not Ebay but Paypal.

[donnacha]

You make it sound like no part of the transaction would occur in Germany aside from the IP connection.

If the German government wants to regulate these services, it'll continue to be able to do so, by something as minimal as, say, requiring that credit card companies refund customers who pay for services that try to bypass the regulatory system, and voiding any bills so they're not legally enforceable. A part of the transaction is occuring in Germany.

I'm not saying that the German government can't throw a spanner in the works, I'm saying that they won't.

Politically, no Western government is going to engage in a drawn-out witch-hunt, mandating the involvement of banks and credit cards companies.

To draw a relevant comparison, European companies have still not managed to universally enforce VAT collection despite threatening to sue American service providers selling to European customers. They are willing to chase that because it's huge money, potentially 15-20% of transatlantic commerce, but it hasn't been easy or very successful.

Notice that they have chosen not to pursue the simpler path of accessing their citizen's bank account and adding a VAT charge to every online service transaction. This is because there are very real blocks, both cultural and legal, that, for the most part, render bank accounts sacred - such access would force to rich to shoulder their fair share of the tax burden and that will never be allowed to happen.

In the case of pursuing the much smaller fish of premium phone services, the only electorate that actually like to see their government flying in the face of the advances that the Internet allows are the French. Every other government knows that stopping their people from benefiting from better services and lower prices is a vote loser and, at the end of the day, that's what it's all about.

BTW, Paypal/Ebay will, absolutely, collect VAT on behalf of European governments, Skype already adds it to your top-ups if you don't have the foresight to say you don't live in Europe. All I'm saying is that the premium phoneline providers are going to lose their monopolies and, with their passing, the market will bloom.

Re:The Key is not Ebay but Paypal.

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:The Key is not Ebay but Paypal.

[Tony Hoyle]

They will be regulated..

Just as in the UK Paypal *is* regulated as a financial insitution (and couldn't get away with some of the things we hear about on slashdot with UK accounts) skype *will* be regulated as a telephone company the moment it gets noticed by the regulators.

That means any premium rate number reachable from the UK will have to comply with UK law - this alone might make such a plan impractical.

Re:The Key is not Ebay but Paypal.

[hawks5999]

You know, this makes perfect sense. I've often thought I'd like to sell my time on ebay. Think "10 hours of Computer Support" Bids start at $300, BuyItNow for $500. Or something along those lines. The problem is of course geography and the prices get spendy quick. But an auction of "60 Minutes of Computer Phone Support" Bidding starts at $30, BuyItNow for $60 makes more sense. The winner gets the pre-paid minutes to my number credited to their skype account and off we go. Now your ebay feedback score gets augmented by your expertise score. And the +5 Funny A++++!111111 comment starts to make sense. The only downside of this advance would be a stifling of free support on forum message boards. n00b:"Hey how do I hack my TiVo?" 1337d00d:"For $50, you can call me for a complete walkthrough."

Re:The Key is not Ebay but Paypal.

[sanx]

AAAAAA+++++!!!!11111 - was realy good and fixd my puter without an+++NO CARRIER+++

Another one bites the dust...

[Karyyk]

And yet another useful, cheap, user-friendly technology is ripped away by a corporate Godzilla. eBay is as bad as they come when it comes to your rights and convenience (they jump through hoops to avoid any responsibility and liability), and are among the more notorious spammers out there. Can unsolicited cold calling via Skype be far behind? Still waiting for Google's PayPal alternative...

Re:1997 insanity?

[cpu_fusion]

If it is flamebait to point out on Slashdot that this latest round of corporate spending seems like the sillyness of the pre-dot-com-bomb era, then so be it. I'll assume some bozo(s) just got moderator points today and also own ebay stock.

If (Paypal) Then find another VOIP provider

[chiph]

If eBay requires Paypal to pay for my Skype service, I'll be finding another VOIP provider. I've done everything I can to avoid the nastyness that Paypal is.

Chip H.

Well gee, that was unexpected...

[hkmwbz]

These guys sure know how to create something, make it successful, and then sell it. They've done it before.

Let's hope Skype doesn't go the way of Kazaa :)

After closing this bid.

[Proz512]

Maybe Yahoo is hoping eBay will back out so they can make a Second Chance Offer for $2.5bn. I'm sure Skype had a Want It Now offer but they were all rejected since the Minimum Reserve was set to $2.0bn.

The listing & closing fees are going to be exorbitant. It is a good thing eBay can pay with American Express.

propiatary format meets monopolist

[marx2002]

whats wrong with that? but there will be a hard time for other solutions to fit the regulation issues of the united states and everywhere else in the world , even if they block skype in china http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=13516&hed =China+Telecom+Blocks+Skype regards

Re:1997 insanity?

[6031769]

You are Steve Ballmer and I claim my £5.

Alternatives to PayPal

[jdfox]

WorldPay, FirePay, NETeller, ProtX, BidPay, NoChex, Verisign, SecPay, FastPay, NetBanx, ChronoPay, PPPay, MoneyBookers, ACT eCash, 900Pay, Citadel, etc. etc.

Re:Alternatives to PayPal

[romka1]

But which one of them is widely used between webmasters? Only Epassporte (which will give you 10-15% lower exchange rate if you take out money in another country).... PayPal has good site and is widely acceptable, unfortunetly they do have problems with locking account :(

Re:Alternatives to PayPal

[alexo]

> WorldPay, FirePay, NETeller, ProtX, BidPay, NoChex, Verisign, SecPay,
> FastPay, NetBanx, ChronoPay, PPPay, MoneyBookers, ACT eCash, 900Pay,
> Citadel, etc. etc.

But which ones:

* Work internationally without major headaches.
(e.g., a transfer of funds between, say, Australia and Canada when both the sender and the receiver work in their native funds)?

* Allow flexibility in sending and receiving the funds
(by credit card, debit card, direct link to bank account, etc.)?

* Have low fees and reasonable conversion rates?

* Are well established and trusted by people?

* Have reasonable and effective customer service, fraud protection and dispute resolution policies?

Re:Alternatives to PayPal

[jdfox]

Most of your terms are too vague to answer: what's "reasonable"? What's "well established"? What's "low"? Which "people"?

I'd have to say that there is no "well established" online payment site yet, by any definition I'd normally use. The business is still busy defining itself, even though there is a pile of money to be made out of it at the moment. That's why there are so many players piling into the market.

PayPal has first-mover advantage in certain market strata, plus the relationship with eBay, to make it the most widely known and used at the moment. But the customer service horror stories are piling up too.

Re:Alternatives to PayPal

[angle_slam]

I'm pretty sure that Neteller meets your requirements. It is used by many on-line gambling sites (Paypal doesn't do gaming); I personally know of Americans, Canadians, and Englishmen who use the system, so that meets your international requirement; its fees are reasonable (no fees at all for certain types of transfers); and well-established and trust is shown by the fact that all the major gaming sites allow deposits and withdrawals by Neteller.

FWIW, Firepay is also used by many of the on-line gambling sites, though Neteller seems more popular.

Re:Alternatives to PayPal

[lord sibn]

You forgot to list my completely legitimate and not at all fake escrow service. Please consider using this service in the future!

Paypal

[hlh_nospam]

There is nothing wrong with Paypal and eBay that wouldn't be cured in a heartbeat by some credible competition, but I don't see any credible competition at the moment. Auction sites (and similar listing sites) come and go, as do online payment systems. I have a few such sites that I like (e.g., Blujay.com and TheHighBidder.com) from the standpoint of user-friendliness and lower cost, but they can't deliver the traffic like eBay. One alternative for online payments that should definitely be avoided is the latest Ponzi scheme from Damon Westmoreland, called GreenZap. I have some hope for either GooglePay or AliPay (from the B2B site Alibaba.com). I would not mind seeing both competing head-to-head with PayPal. Unfortunately, in the Internet world, there is a tendency for only one company to completely dominate any particular niche -- and #2 is usually way down in the noise.

I used to swear by skype

[hesaigo999ca]

I used to skype all my friends from one side of the continent to the other, and now with this, i don't think ebay would ever give anything for free based on their "charge you for everything they can" attitude. So long free voip , hello empty paypal account....I am looking forward to seeing what googletalk offers... "sucks to be flatulent in an empty elevator"

it's not over yet

[bnitsua]

hey, we don't know if ebay is the winner yet, the auction still has 7+ hours left...

Might there be even bigger, and maybe better?

[tux0r]

So eBay purchases Skype, thereby vastly increasing its effective client base. Not what I would have predicted - everyone's favourite not-being-evil search organisation didn't get to buy Skype after all.

But imagine the power in a purchase or alliance the two ultra heavyweights... EBay's worth too much for Google to buy outright at current prices (> $50bn) but the resulting search and information possibilities would be mind boggling if they could integrate effectively.

- M

Next acquisition by Ebay

[16K Ram Pack]

A TV episode, featuring a leather jacketed cool guy from the 1950s, riding his motorbike over a tank containing a shark.

crud i knew this was coming

[Robocoastie]

kiss skype good bye now as it swiftly becomes a new source of spam just like happend to ICQ when aol bought it.

regarding firewall traversal

[harshaw]

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.

Re:regarding firewall traversal

[petermgreen]

4) if you are one of the non-firewalled machines it can really rape your bandwidth i've seen reports of it saturating 100mbit!

skype users will bypass eBay fees

[havaloc]

People will start using Skype to bypass eBay and their fees and deal directly with their favorite sellers.

Outbid

[tedrlord]

I just know that somebody is going to show up in the last ten seconds and bid $2.7 billion. Unfortunately, eBay was at work so it missed the end.

It turned out okay, though, since this was actually the Hong Kong import version of Skype, a fact the seller carefully skirted in the description.

A real time "Google Answers"

[mparaz]

Exciting. Too bad for me, we don't have PayPal here (Philippines).

Another possibility for commerce is negotiating on the phone then making the payment directly through Skype.

Category

[Proz512]

I wonder what category the auction for Skype was under. I couldn't find the Overbloated Corporate Buyout category.

2.6 billion for a VoIP System?

[johnrob]

I should have offered to build one for 2 billion. No, I could probably even get it working by nickel and diming it with something like 1.5 billion.

Final Value Fees

[Proz512]

If this was a standard eBay Auction with no additional features using the eBay Calculator, if Skype's opening bid was $2.0bn and since it ended with an offer of 2.6bn, the total fees would have been $39,000,017.93.

A non knee-jerk reaction

[5n3ak3rp1mp]

I tried both Skype and GizmoProject.
With GP you MUST use a headset. Meanwhile, I could talk to someone with Skype using my existing iSight cam's built-in mic and my comp speakers. No issues with feedback whatsoever. This alone was worth a lot, in my opinion, as much as I am a fan of GizmoProject and SIP. And the average consumer (of which you and I are not) is not going to care about standards compliance (witness AIM, etc.)

I've used PayPal for years now with no issues, and I do like their clean site design. I think that you can take almost any company and create a thatcompanysucks.com site and populate it with true content, as no company is perfect.

I've also used eBay for some time, and their site is pretty badly designed (weird session management, searching for completed items is wacky, etc.) But... I still use 'em.

eBay buys Skype - graph of the buzz spike

[otisg]

This blog post has a nice graph showing the "eBay buys Skype" buzz spike.

I almost had it for $2,599,999.00

[kokoloko]

But E-bay got in at the last second.

Bidding Wars

[yoelst]

The original selling price was $2.0 billion until the last minute when bidding up'd it to $2.6 billion.

Re:What is so special about Skype?

[abdulwahid]

In other words, a lot of stuff come together in Skype. The only point against I can think of is the missing interoperability with other software because of the proprietary protocols.

And personally I think this is the biggest downside which should be making all of us who like free software cringe. I dread to think of a world where phone calls on the net are dominated by one company and my Linux desktop is rubbish as my client is always one step behind the latest one for Windows. Also, a software where I have no control, no ability to bug fix, no ability to make improvements.

I suggest we try to help, develop and promote the free altenatives e.g. asterisk, gnomemeeting, linphone etc. and look to use VoIP providers using the standards. I have already hooked up many of my family and friends on SIP but there are more and more people hassling me to use Skype every day. :(

Now we need a frigging Do-Not-Call list for VOIP.

[PapaBoojum]

My bet is soon every Skype customer w/o a caller filter gets innundated with unsolicited telemarketing calls, now that e-Bay - an uber-spammer themselves - controls things?

Re: To prevent snipe-bidding

[falser]

* Ring, Ring *

"Hello, this is eBay letting you know that you've been outbid on item 501332567. Press 1 to re-enter a higher bid. Thank-you."

Re: To prevent snipe-bidding

[generic-man]

Skype also offers an IM service that eBay could use to pester bidders. I used to use their MSN Alerts service before eBay shut it off, so when I used MSN Messenger I would get alerts about being outbid.

For auction messages where time is of the essence, IM makes much more sense than e-mail for outbid notices.

Voice contact with a buyer/seller ? No thanks.

[tabbser]

The entire point of eBay to me is that this is not done in realtime. I put up an auction and several days later check to see who is winning and what their feedback and history looks like. I sell cellphones and I would hate to be available by voice to all the morons who send email along these lines : "Can you ship to malaysia if I pay with a french credit card because my boss is in Japan and needs a GSM phone right away" You'd be amazed at how often I hear these types of stories, despite indicating in large red text that I do not ship internationally and am not stupid. Having these people call me at 3am ? No thanks. I just closed my skype account. (well, emailed support to have them close it since there doesn't appear to be a way on the web page)

Time-AOL.

[jotaeleemeese]

What else do you need?

Microsoft

[Per Abrahamsen]

Microsoft has never been an OS company. They have always been an application company, and most of the time made most of their money on applications. Their Mac application was at one point their largest cash cow.

They should expand closer to core business.

[jotaeleemeese]

There are millions of things Ebay could do:

-Allow you to use their thechnology for "turn-key" auctions websites for niche-markets (i.e an auctins site for Londoners wanting to but books in Hungarian...).

-Associate with stock-bokers in order to auction financial goods and services.

-Make Pay-Pal a real bank.

etc.etc.etc

VoIP has nothing to do with their core bussiness, if I was a shareholder I would be asking a lot of questions....

Hello Mr Buyer...?

[shlashdot]

How about we eliminate the middle man on this auction...

So now the feds get access to Skype records too.

[Joe Helfrich]

Remember this? http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/01/14 47232&tid=158&tid=17 I had been thinking about setting up a Skype In number too. Guess I'll go for Gizmo instead.

RIP SKYPE

[asscroft]

I hardly knew ya.

This sucks, until proven otherwise, not the other way around.

paypal + skype = suxorz

Re:$2.6 BILLION!!!!!

[hritcu]

... they are buying the customers as much as they are buying the infrastructure

Skype is a peer-to-peer "thing", so there is hardly any infrastructure, is it?

Unparalleled

[Angelwrath]

Yes, it's "to create an unparalleled e-commerce and communications engine".

But unfortunately, it is eclipsed by several orders of magnitude by the world's largest, and truly unparalleled ecommerce and communications engine: THE INTERNET. Hey eBay, the marketing morons didn't think that comment through very well, now did they?

Socialization?

[blaksaga]

Fuck! Now I actually have to _talk_ to people during a transaction?

That's so 1990's.

Re:$2.6 BILLION!!!!!

[everphilski]

Software, both client side and server side, is infrastructure. Corporate billing systems, advertising methods, etc. also fall under infrastructure.

-everphilski-

Re:$2.6 BILLION!!!!!

[everphilski]

Your missing the point. They pay $1000 to get you as a customer. Who cares if you don't use eBay or PayPal. In a few years, just by way of your subscription to skype, you will pay for yourself, with interest.

The alternative that was proposed - that my post replied to - was saying they should just put a bunch of open source software together and make their own stab at a VoIP service. I'm saying, getting the millions of customers and the name will pay for itself quickly, even if they don't buy into your other services.

Remember - they have money to burn, and they are on the top of their game. What else are they supposed to do with it?

-everphilski-

Re:$2.6 BILLION!!!!!

[hritcu]

Advertising methods? On Skype? I have never seen a single ad on Skype since I'm using it? And software is infrastructure now? I think you have a very broad definition of infrastructure.

Re:What is so special about Skype?

[Carewolf]

And it has or at least had a huge technological head start. I remember evaluating various services 2 years ago, and found all of them of very low quality with echo and huge delays. That is until I tried Skype.

I've been told MS has finally caught up, but I think it's too late for the buzz. Skype has won on nerds recommending it from years of good experience and problems with all other services.

Qualification

[SuperKendall]

I think his message implied ones that are actually useful.

With PayPal you have the Holy Trinity of auction management - buyer pays you via PayPal, you pay eBay fees via PayPal, you buy USPS postage that you print yourself via PayPal.

At least PayPal is a known quantity in terms of risk managemnet.

Smartest man here

[SuperKendall]

Totally ties in with half.com or whatever that eBay store is. People could call sellers and leave voice questions instead of just using email.

A little wierd but I could see them wanting to offer it.