eBay stumps up gazillions for Skype

Written by Wil Harris

September 13, 2005 | 08:10

Tags: #26 #news-corporation #purchase #sip #skype #voip

Companies: #ebay #microsoft

eBay has confirmed that it is going to buy Skype for an astronomical $2.6 Billion dollars.

There has been a lot of speculation about the sale of Skype recently, with other companies such as Microsoft and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation allegedly interested. However, it seems that it's eBay's offer that has won over the board of the VOIP firm (although it's hard to turn down more than a billion quid, we'd imagine).

Skype, as if you didn't know, provides Voice Over IP services for home PC users. It uses a proprietary codec for voice transfer, as opposed to the standard SIP protocol which commercial- and enterprise-grade VOIP solutions do. It's this proprietary approach that makes its technology incredibly valuable. The approach has worked phenomenally well, with Skype now having over 50 million registered users and often 1m online at any time.

eBay purchased PayPal last year, and this latest acquisition points towards its vision of providing a range of services around the 'end to end' sales transaction - eBay envisages that buyers and sellers will be able to talk to each other using Skype, and it also plans to push Skype further into new areas.

Let us know what you think of the sale in the forum.
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