eBay will be acquiring Skype, the global Internet communications company, for approximately $2.6 billion in up-front cash and eBay stock.
It will make a further payout of up to $1.5 billion if certain financial targets are met.
I’m not too sure what to think about this.
Everyone seems to be jumping on the messaging and VoIP bandwagon with or without a goal nowadays.
The press release says a lot about how great a combination the two companies are although I honestly can’t see how.
Ok, there could be an integration between eBay’s auction services and the Skype messenger allowing people to directly get in touch with each other through the messenger or for auction notifications to pop up while you’re chatting.
But I don’t really see this as a good enough reason to go and toss out all that money.
Some people think eBay might be after the 52 million people who downloaded Skype, but I don’t really think so.
I think the Skype users who do buy or sell online through auctions are most probably already eBay users, and those who aren’t won’t really buy or sell online because of this, they’ll only do it when they need to.
Anyway I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how this plays out in the end.
