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.

technorati: ebay skype

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 10th, 2005 at 10:46 pm by Insider and is filed under Weekend Edition / Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.