The future looked bright in September 2005 when eBay announced it was buying Internet telephony company Skype Technologies for $2.6 billion. But after four years of unfulfilled expectations, the marriage between the online auction giant and the upstart VoIP provider came to an end Tuesday when eBay said it was unloading Skype to a group of private investors for $1.9 billion.
Bad Partners
[ Stay ahead of the key tech business news with InfoWorld's Today's Headlines: First Look newsletter and InfoWorld Daily podcast. ]
Why did the merger fail? When eBay bought Skype, it had hoped the VoIP service would improve communications between its customers. Buyers could talk easily with sellers about items they were interested in; in turn, sellers could build relationships with customers via the power of VoIP chats.
But the Skype-eBay integration never panned out. The main reason: For most eBay users, email is good enough. Buyers and sellers don't really need a voice call to seal a deal.
"I'm a fairly regular eBay user, and there are ways of interacting without using voice over IP," says blogger and tech journalist Tom Keating, who writes the VoIP & Gadgets Blog for TMCNet. "I think people like the anonymity of eBay. Talking is a great thing. You can communicate and ask more details about the product. But people prefer anonymity, and they don't necessarily want to talk with the person on the other end."
Andy Abramson, a marketing consultant and Internet telephony guru who writes the VoIP Watch blog, agrees. The eBay ecosystem, he says, consists of three groups: buyers, sellers, and third-party operators that ship products. "Those three [groups] were built around a bunch of customers who never wanted to talk to anybody," Abramson says. With eBay, "you don't have to talk to your customers. You have to email them. Skype is all about talking or chatting."
The eBay-Skype marriage suffered from other problems too. First, the culture clash between the two companies was too great to overcome. "eBay is an extremely conservative, bank-like culture," says Abramson. "Skype was out to be the democratization of voice. They were out to be the leveler of the playing field, and they've done that." In addition, Skype went through several management teams during its four-year eBay period--a lack of consistency that didn't help matters at all.
Skype's Future?
Now that Skype is free of eBay, where will it go from here? Keating sees Skype making a play for the business VoIP market, where competition is fierce. Abramson believes the company will focus on bringing advanced video conferencing services to consumers, and on expanding its presence in the mobile VoIP market.
Get the independent advice and expertise you need to support a virtual workforce.
The increase in Linux popularity has increased the frequency and sophistication of malware attacks. Read this 2 page white paper now to learn how you can protect your Linux environment with real-time protection that is certified by all major Linux vendors.
Download now »
Ensuring acceptable application delivery will become even more difficult over the next few years. As a result, IT organizations need to ensure that the approach that they take to resolving the current application delivery challenges can scale to support the emerging challenges. This handbook elaborates on the key tasks associated with planning, optimization, management and control and provides decision criteria to help IT organizations choose appropriate solutions.
Download now »
A common misconception is that mid-range storage requirements are dramatically different than that of a larger enterprise. Mid-range storage users may require less capacity, but they have similar functionality and management requirements. This ESG paper examines mid-range storage needs and reviews a new solution that adjusts size while retaining value, performance and functionality.
Download now »
Sign up to receive InfoWorld Resource Alerts
Like any valuable resource, IT is a terrible thing to waste. But by applying the same lean techniques that have been used to streamline manufacturing processes, IT departments can reduce costs, improve performance and better manage resources.
Download now! »
Stephen Elliot, vice president of strategy for CA's Infrastructure Management and Data Center Automation business unit, explains why difficult economic times drive the need for simplified management capabilities and advanced automation tools.
Listen now! »
According to a recent study CA conducted with 300 CIOs and top IT executives, 64 percent of respondents say they've already invested in virtualization, and the other 36 percent reported that they plan to invest in virtualization.
Download now! »
In this video learn about process automation in a virtualized world. How CA and VMware are enabling enterprise datacenter automation.
View now! »
7 Recommendations
