Online auction leader, eBay has agreed to takeover VoIP provider, Skype for approximately $2.6 billion in cash and stock. Initially eBay will pay $1.3 billion in cash and another 32.4 million shares of eBay stock – about 42 times Skype’s expected 2005 earnings of $60 million. eBay will also make a further payout of up to $1.5 billion by 2008 or 2009 in additional performance-based considerations. This is giving the deal a total value of up to $4.1 billion.
Skype is one of the fastest growing companies on the Internet which is established on August 2003. In Skype web site, you can see the total download of Skype is more than 165 million times. 2 years and a month after the launching of Skype, it now has 54 million members in 225 countries and territories and approximately 150,000 users are added a day.
“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.”
Skype’s CEO and co-founder, Niklas Zennström believe that eBay and Paypal would bring Skype to achieve it’s vision that to build the world’s largest communications business and ease the voice communication via Internet.
Soon Skype will be integrated into eBay to provide better communication between buyers and sellers so they can talk to each other easily to discuss about their deal. Not only Skype being integrated in eBay auction, some new lines of business like pay-per-call commucation are in their plan. Skype also will be integrated into eBay’s other shopping websites such as Shopping.com, Rent.com,Half.com, and Kijiji Whereas, Paypal wallet will associate with each Skype account to ease the payment for Skype fee-based services.
Skype, Paypal and eBay, would work together to accelerate the growth of one another and increasing the value of the combined online business. I believe they can produce another better engine for ecommerce and communcation over the world. Don’t you think so? But i do because three of the world popular and famous Online Marketplace, Global Internet Commucation Company, and Global Leader in Online Payment are now together.
