Re: eBay admits Skype Mistake, Skype co-founders forced out

On 2007-10-02, SMS <scharf.steven@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The Ghost of General Lee wrote:

eBay *WAS* stupid to buy a losing proposition like Skype. They
admitted they made a mistake. Just because you sit in your trailer
and make up excuses how Skype was such a wonderful purchase for eBay
doesn't make it so. So get back to your bottle, Skype pimp.

It was also front page news on this morning's San Jose paper.

Now that the money they paid is gone, and the infrastructure is in
place, the costs of continuing the Skype service is probably minimal.

They can't compete against true VOIP solutions such as Vonage and
Voicestick, but there's not much money in doing that anyway. If they try
to eliminate free computer to computer calls, then that's the end of
Skype completely.

Voicestick? Skype finished FY2006 with $195 million in revenue (I'm too
lazy to dig through Ebay's 10Q for more current numbers) and is apparently
making an operating profit. This is a small number only in comparison
to their purchase price. Vonage does about that much revenue in a quarter
now, though it has yet to turn a profit.

Voicestick, on the other hand, in the quarter ended June 30, had $200,000
(yes, that's two hundred thousand) in revenue and spent about $2.2 million
in the quarter while making that. This doesn't seem like much of a business
at all, yet, though hope springs eternal if they don't run out of money
first.

Dennis Ferguson
.

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