OK.... Bushie's question got me curious.
Ebay owns Skype....
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industrie ... kype_x.htm
EBay to buy Skype in $2.6 billion deal
By Kevin Maney, USA TODAY
Making one of its riskiest bets yet, eBay (EBAY) said Monday that it will buy Internet voice service Skype. That could eventually pit eBay against phone companies and VoIP services such as Vonage.
EBay CEO Meg Whitman, left, poses with Niklas Zennstrom of Skype. EBay owns PayPal.
Sergio Dionisio, AFP/Getty Images
Buying Skype "is a lot more of a stretch than any of the other acquisitions they've done," says David Edwards, equity analyst at American Technology Research.
EBay will pay $2.6 billion for Skype, which can be used to make free, high-quality voice calls from one computer running Skype software to another, anywhere in the world. Customers need a PC with a microphone. For a fee, Skype users can call regular telephones and vice versa.
EBay insists the deal isn't a major corporate turn. Top eBay executives became aware of Skype about a year ago, "And we started putting some thinking against Skype," says eBay CFO Rajiv Dutta.
Building Skype into eBay will allow buyers and sellers to click a button on the screen to talk to each other, Dutta says. That would be valuable when a buyer has a lot of questions about an expensive product, such as a car, or when an auction is close to closing.
Visiting the sites
Once eBay buys Skype the combined companies would have nearly 59 million visitors per month. A breakdown:
Aug. 2004 Aug. 2005 Pctg. change
Skype Tech. 398,000 1.1 million 178%
eBay 50.3 million 57.8 million 15%
Source: Nielsen NetRatings, September 2005
"We've always sought to remove friction from e-commerce," eBay CEO Meg Whitman says. Adding Skype "will lead to a better experience and increase the velocity of trades." Plus, eBay could charge sellers to add Skype to their postings, Whitman says.
Yet the deal moves eBay into unfamiliar territory against powerful competitors. Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom on Monday repeated his boast that he has a "vision of creating the world's largest communications company."
"That's what made Skype special to us," Dutta says. "We loved their vision."
Though other online services such as Google Talk offer free computer-to-computer voice conversations, Skype has caught fire globally. It's adding 150,000 users a day, the majority in countries such as China, India and Sweden. In 2005, Skype's first full year of charging for services, it will have revenue of $60 million. Skype expects revenue to jump to $200 million in 2006.
Before starting Skype, Zennstrom and partner Janus Friis created Kazaa, a file-sharing service that has mostly been used to trade pirated music.
EBay sees Skype as a high-growth business and strong brand name on the Net, which could help reinvigorate eBay's growth, Dutta says. In 2003, eBay's revenue jumped 78% from the year before. In 2004, growth slowed to 51%. EBay shares closed Monday at $38.94, up 32 cents.
communicate when I'm on the road.
