{"id":2309,"date":"2008-04-02T10:37:06","date_gmt":"2008-04-02T15:37:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=2309"},"modified":"2008-04-02T10:37:06","modified_gmt":"2008-04-02T15:37:06","slug":"memo-to-ebay-just-sell-skype-already","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2008\/04\/02\/memo-to-ebay-just-sell-skype-already\/","title":{"rendered":"Memo to eBay: Just sell Skype already"},"content":{"rendered":"

At this point, I couldn’t really care less who eBay sells Skype to, whether it’s Google — as the current crop of rumours seems to indicate<\/a> — or Microsoft, or even Dunkin Donuts for that matter (don’t laugh; I can see a business model there). As Fred notes<\/a>, it has never made any sense as part of eBay, and certainly not $4-billion worth of sense, and it doesn’t make any sense now. Meg Whitman managed to sell that idea to a gullible board desperate for growth of any kind, and instead they got a bag of goodwill the size of Manhattan, which they eventually wrote off<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Skype could have a huge amount of value<\/a> as part of Google. Maybe even as much as eBay offered in the beginning, but certainly a lot more than it has produced for the auction provider. Google has made it obvious that it wants to move into mobile with Android, it’s financing wireless initiatives — voice calling either on the PC or on a mobile makes sense as a place for Google to go, if only because it could integrate the app<\/a> not just with Google Talk but with its core search business and its money-spinning keyword ad business. Let’s hope this one actually comes true.<\/p>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At this point, I couldn’t really care less who eBay sells Skype to, whether it’s Google — as the current crop of rumours seems to indicate — or Microsoft, or even Dunkin Donuts for that matter (don’t laugh; I can see a business model there). As Fred notes, it has never made any sense as … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Memo to eBay: Just sell Skype already”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}