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EBay Sells Skype To Marc Andreessen
Julefrokost writes "Computerworld has a story about eBay selling Skype. Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape, along with a group of investors, are reported to have paid $2 billion for Skype. According to the New York Times, Google was also a potential buyer. Also, the original founders of Skype are said to have placed a bid, but Marc Andreessen & Co was the highest bidder."
Considering the continuing legal troubles, I'm surprised they found a buyer. That's why Google purportedly backed out of negotiations to buy them some time back.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Teamspeak / ventrilo / mumble? :P
Yet another free service gets snapped up for billions, in the hopes that it will somehow generate more than the expended value in ad revenue. Either that or some other magical source of cash influx that will not be spent by its users who are used to getting it free and will jump ship if subscription models become mandatory.
It seems a lot of people still believe that when the internet is involved, tried and true business rules and plain old common sense do not apply. Is the black magic of the interwebs not dead yet?
Last i checked, Skype was ad-free and financed itself through charging for connections to "real" phones and for national phone numbers.
You have no clue what you are writing about.
They charge for calls to regular phones.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
The interesting thing about this deal is that eBay actually bought Skype from the founders for 3.1 billion US dollars. They are now selling for 2 billion which makes you think about the huge loss and the extremely bad deal they made in buying in the first place. When eBay bought Skype it was seen by many as the worst IT business deal, ever!
Is there a Windows port?
Sure, http://wiki.ekiga.org/index.php/Windows_Users
I pay for SkypeIN and SkypeOut. It's a great deal. Unlimited Skype to Skype and 10,000 minutes per month to and from land lines. I have a real local phone number which displays on peoples caller ID if I so desire. Prices vary by locality, so check. It's about the same yearly as many people pay monthly for their cellular plan.
I have incoming calls redirect to my cellphone and office phone after so many seconds. You can load Skype up on your Windows Mobile, iPhone, and iPod touch with the Apple microphone headphones. While this is in no way a cell phone replacement, it's free minutes if you are near a good WIFI and need to place an outgoing call. There are physical wireless Skype Phones, but the quality is not near the level of a cell phone yet.
You can run Skype on many PC's at the same time and answer on which ever one you are sitting at. I have an ASUS EEE BOX PC at home wall mounted as an IPCCTV server, also running Skype. It's also running on my Laptop at work at the moment. My wife and I often video chat through Skype instead of using our phones. The audio is better quality than what my cellular provider offers.
Hopefully more people will see the benefits of the paid services and Skype will continue.
If you RTFA you would know that "its revenue grew 25 percent year-on-year to $170 million in the second quarter".
I did the same thing, purchasing a Linksys SPA-2200 and connecting it to a Canadian SIP provider (Acanac). That's after purchasing a crappy Skype USB phone. The difference is astounding and it's a dirt cheap, full replacement for a landline. I even use ekiga on a netbook when I wan't a "portable" phone line. And if Acanac ever raised their price, I can easily switch to a different provider and use the same box.
"Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns" -Journal of Political Econom
Comment removed based on user account deletion
burn up cell minutes.
Wrong. I have a G1 on T-Mobile and just put my GV number into my favorite 5. All outbound calls I make with Google Voice are included in my plan 24 hours a day, all month long so I just cranked my plan minutes down to the minimum and it's great.
For those who had all but given up on Skype in Linux, they just released a new Linux client beta version in the last few days or so. Finally there are changes afoot...