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eBay will IPO Skype next year

by Scott Bicheno on 15 April 2009, 15:19

Tags: Skype, eBay

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Synergy schmynergy

Yesterday we brought you the news that giant car-boot sale website eBay was reversing an acquisition it made two years ago by selling StumbleUpon back to its founders.

This news revived speculation that eBay was feeling at a similar loss about what to do with Internet telephony pioneer Skype, which it bought for a couple of billion Euros back in 2005.

We don't know if eBay offered Skype back to its founders or not, but even if it did they would have stuggled to raise anywhere near that much in the current credit climate. Instead, eBay has moved to quiet speculation by announcing plans to spin-off Skype in an initial public offering (IPO) in the first half of next year.

"Skype is a great stand-alone business with strong fundamentals and accelerating momentum, but it's clear that Skype has limited synergies with eBay and PayPal," said eBay's president and CEO, John Donahoe.

Let's just remind ourselves what was said by previous CEO Meg Whitman at the time of the Skype acquisition: "Communications is at the heart of ecommerce and community," she said. "By combining the two leading ecommerce franchises, eBay and PayPal, with the leader in Internet voice communications, we will create an extraordinarily powerful environment for business on the Net."

In retrospect it looks like people never felt the need to have a big chat when they were just buying a second-hand DVD. This serves as a further indictment of Whitman's ability to spot a synergy and confirms that Donahoe, who took over as CEO last year, will refocus on eBay's core business.

 



HEXUS Forums :: 3 Comments

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They dropped the ball with Skype imho, they should of advertised the nuts off of it and pushed it properly instead of buying it and sitting on there arses…
If they sort their pricing structure out so that it doesn't punish sellers, as well as their ludicrous support and maybe they also need to focus on the anti-competative nature of forcing the use of Paypal, aswell as paypals ludicrous system of money clawbacks, they might start earning money again.

Punish sellers who are providing eBay with their revenue is tantamount to suicide, sellers will generally have the consumer in mind already while also trying not to get fleeced in the process, so giving buyers all the cards isn't helping win sellers confidence.

Most businesses who use eBay don't want to be contacted by voice as part of most transactions as they are wanting to get on with packaging up items and getting them out of the door and dealing with listing etc, they don't want to be glued to their computer and dealing with e-mail queries is much easier as can be done in a sellers timeframe and the standard telephone usually suffices for any contact required over the phone.
I wonder if investors will be forced to use Paypal to buy Skype? :)