Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Is There Intelligent Life on eBay?

Today, eBay announced that they had overpaid for Skype, the free phone service they purchased two years ago, and cited that the service had not met the company's profit and revenue objectives.

In what has to be the strangest deal I've ever seen, somehow, eBay won't have to pay all the money promised at the beginning of the deal. In either case, it looks like eBay made a bad deal for their investors. Skype was supposedly going to be used by every auction user on the planet, but most of us who list and sell on the site really don't want to be bothered answering phone calls.

Naturally, eBay executives never bothered to ask sellers if they would be interested in using a service like Skype. Had they, maybe they would have saved themselves some money and embarrassment. Oddly enough, eBay stock was up nearly a buck after the news came out.

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