VoIP provider Skype of Luxembourg will be acquired by the online auctioneer in a cash and stock deal.
eBay To Buy Skype Internet Telephony Service
Many thought Skype had erred by passing on News Corp’s reputed $3 billion bid for the company. Other bidders had reportedly found Skype asking price more than they were willing to meet and went with purchasing other companies, like Yahoo buying Dialpad and Microsoft acquiring Teleo.
Skype’s owners have found a bid from eBay to be just what they wanted, according to Reuters. The online auction company will reportedly pay $1.3 billion in cash and another $1.3 billion in stock for the VoIP service and software provider.
Further, Skype’s ownership could receive another $1.5 billion if eBay meets certain undisclosed financial goals by 2008 or 2009. eBay announced the acquisition during a conference call this morning.
eBay sees Skype as being a means to “accelerate commerce” on their global auction sites. Combined with PayPal, Skype lets eBay open up new monetization models, like pay-per-call. Future eBay listings will contain a Skype notification in the contact box; that notifier tells if the seller is online, and a bidder can initiate a Skype session from there.
In its presentation this morning, eBay lists a few categories that “require significant communication”: automotive, travel, real estate, and services. They plan to use pay-per-call to help monetize local classifieds, like those provided on Kijiji.com. eBay also showed how Skype would be utilized on eBay China listings.
Skype software allows for free PC to PC calls. A premium service called SkypeOut lets users call any telephone in the world for a nominal fee. That service has generated some controversy with the disclosure that a division of China Telecom has blocked SkypeOut. Skype and its Chinese partner, Tom Online, had not planned on offering SkypeOut to users in China anyway.
The voice aspect of Internet communications, coupled with the growth in pay-per-call advertising and local search, has brought VoIP to the attention of the big search engines. Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo all offer PC to PC voice chat now.
Yahoo and Microsoft both own VoIP companies, and will integrate them into their services to let users call any phone number. That would enable the search engines to match AOL and Verizon on profiting from pay-per-call sessions initiated by users to advertisers. Google has not yet announced further refinement of its Google Talk client to include PC to phone calling.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
