Will eBay Sell Its Billion Dollar Lemon?

[mandy]

Still smarting from the indignity of having its value slashed by $1.4 billion, Skype now is grappling with a growing list of customer complaints about its popular Internet phone service and speculation eBay may be looking to unload the business...

The news has been so discouraging for so long that some wonder whether eBay (EBAY) might be ready to throw in the towel and sell the lemon it bought for top dollar in 2005. The whispers are that eBay has shopped Skype to Google (GOOG), News Corp. (NWS), and Yahoo! (YHOO). Yet sources tell BusinessWeek.com that eBay may want to tinker a while longer to make Skype pay off...

full article: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/c...op+stories

[mandy]

Fast forward 5 months...eBay now admits it may dump the lemon

There have been tons of rumors swirling around eBay potentially selling Skype and today, according to the Financial Times (they yellow paper newspaper) John Donahoe said:

    "What we're testing this year are the synergies," Mr Donahoe told the Financial Times this week after Ebay reported its latest earnings. "If the synergies are strong, we'll keep it in our portfolio. If not, we'll reassess it." That could lead to the disposal of the business, he indicated...

full article: http://ebaystrategies.blogs.com/ebay_str...s-tha.html
The FT article: http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?...1406499364&referrer_id=yahoofinance

[mandy]

A related article:

eBay's Skype: what went wrong, and who can fix it

Who would buy this thing?

If eBay is unwilling to push the integration points with Skype much harder (I don't think that it's unable to do it), then it would make good sense to look for a buyer for this hunk of virtual deadwood. The service comes with solid technology and 309 million users worldwide that made a combined 15.9 billion minutes (30,200 years) worth of calls last year.

Facebook would clearly love a piece of that action, but could hardly afford it without a serious cash infusion from somewhere. MySpace, with the financial heft of News Corp., could buy it, but I'm not sure that the management team there appreciates the potential power of such a hookup. The social networking guys are focused on marketing right now.

Google has deep pockets and could link Skype into its Google Talk platform, which would be a serious upgrade to that user base. Microsoft has the cash, the rival chat-and-talk network, and the acquisitive history to make a credible buyer, but is also way too occupied with the Yahoo deal to make a move today. Yahoo itself could pick up Skype to build its corporate image a bit and thereby encourage a higher bid from a suitor like Microsoft, but should probably think bigger in that case and try a wholesale merger with eBay...

full article: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/200...ix-it.html