Four years later: eBay sells Skype for the same price it paid for it
I wrote about eBay in May 2008, and talked about how the company had a lot of issues, specifically with their direction. I mentioned Skype in particular and how much they paid for it, which can also be found in their press release here. Today they announced that they are selling it, and lucky for them getting back what they paid for it, and even keeping at 35% stake in the company.
What is strange is that Jim Goldman on CNBC said they paid “over 1 billion dollars” for Skype. Not sure where he came up with that number.
From an investor standpoint, NOT TECHNOLOGY standpoint, Skype can be looked at as the great-grand daddy of Twitter. It has a ton of potential, a large and growing customer base, but how do you make money with it?
What is clear from this move is that eBay’s vision of Skype never came to fruition and probably never could. Their visions of a grand open market place where a buyer could video chat with a seller with a single click, just isn’t in the cards. It would do wonders for their trust levels, but it just isn’t in the cards.
If I were still an eBay investor, I’d be content to know that the Skype acquisition didn’t turn out to be a big negative, and hopefully the company can re-focus on its core business. Four years of holding onto a company, and dumping it for what you paid for it is a decent situation in these times we are in.