eBay and Skype: “Buy Me Now”?
eBay and Skype for $2-3 billion??
Okay, there are rumors abound on this one and I just can’t make sense of any of them. I can see how eBay is starting to feel a little small and one-dimensional compared to Google and now News Corp., but I just don’t get the phone connection, so to speak.
Is it so that bidders can talk to each other? (fyi: yeech!)
Is it so that you have one stop shopping for both long distance and Beanie Babies?
Will this help them crack international markets?
Do they sense a slowdown in their core business?
I’d appreciate any insight that readers have.
Update: the deal is supposedly going through and here’s the company line:
“The auction company’s executives said that adding a voice calling feature to its existing online network would let it charge fees to merchants for generating sales leads the internet’s fastest-growing business, currently dominated by the two biggest search engine companies. It could represent the most important in a series of recent initiatives by Ebay to extendinto new areas of online activity.”
Oh, yeah, the price could top $4b if Skype hits certain targets.
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September 11th, 2005 at 7:44 am
Their market is maturing and they are looking to diversify. Skype is a logical choice for anyone, it is growing rapidly. But Skype is having problems – China Telecom is blocking Skype from it’s users in China, and is planning to block them everywhere. Ebay might want to wait for this news to negatively impact the share price before buying
September 11th, 2005 at 10:21 am
Makes sense to me but seems like quite a jump. What does eBay know about being a phone company?
By the way, thanks for the tip on the Aussie Bird Flap (so to speak).
October 5th, 2005 at 7:26 am
[...] nies Think It’s 1999–and that’s not good
First eBay buys a small Internet telecom business for several billion dollars and Newscorp buys MySpace–a com [...]