Why ebay bought Skype?

Posted: September 13th, 2005 | 3 Comments »

eBay/Skype analyst conference call

“Communications is at the heart of ecommerce and community,�? said Meg Whitman, President and Chief Executive Officer of eBay. “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.

At least some people are trying to explain why this move makes sense. I can see potential in this deal, but not worth several billion $. Are we having a new bubble here, where a company that generated 7 millions of revenues in 2004 (prediction for 2005: 60 millions) is bought for such an outrageous amount of money?

3 Comments on “Why ebay bought Skype?”

  1. 1 nicolas said at 14:23 on September 13th, 2005:

    Some more analysis about this by the former CEO of Kelkoo here: http://chappaz.blogspot.com/2005/09/la-logique-du-rachat-de-skype-par-ebay.html in french though

  2. 2 laurent said at 23:32 on September 13th, 2005:

    wow, analysis galore all around the web

  3. 3 Laurent Haug’s blog » Blog Archive » Lesson in the Value of Hype said at 22:55 on October 3rd, 2007:

    [...] a tough headline now that the Skype deal officially resulted in a $1.43B loss. This deal – who made me and many others quite skeptic – seems to have created value for only one industry: Swedish private [...]

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