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eBay admits they overpaid for Skype

It’s not every day you hear a massive corporation admit that they, you know, made a mistake. Then again, we’ve seen stranger things before. EBay today admitted that they may have overpaid when they acquired VoIP company Skype in 2005. How much did they overspend? Roughly $1 billion. That’s quite a bit of cash. EBay is marking down the value of Skype at just over $900 million less than the $2.6 billion it payed to acquire the company just two years prior. Apparently Skype hasn’t proven to be the cash cow that eBay expected, with the company’s attempt to integrate Skype into its auction services falling solidly on their face. It’s not clear as to exactly what eBay intends to do to dig Skype out of the internet telephony hole, but some significant changes are certainly in order if it hopes to reclaim any of that lost revenue.

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11 comment(s) for this post.

  1. On Oct 2, 2007 @ 4:38 pm, Galvatron Said:

    Ouce when the voip market opened up an the calling cards skuy looked like crap compared to voonage

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  2. On Oct 2, 2007 @ 5:17 pm, james Said:

    How can we make Galvatron go away? I am a little tired of all the nonsense that he posts!

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  3. On Oct 2, 2007 @ 6:12 pm, JJLO Said:

    My only request is that he type readable english.

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  4. On Oct 2, 2007 @ 6:26 pm, Pete Said:

    Hahaha I hate ebay so I love it when they lose money.

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  5. On Oct 2, 2007 @ 8:19 pm, JJDon Said:

    No surprise.
    Skype was a no go for me from day one.

    There are better VoIP solutions than Skype. eBay just got caught up in the moment. :-/

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  6. On Oct 2, 2007 @ 9:58 pm, Lost In Translation Said:

    Agreed that Galv’s Posts are hard to read, but you can just skip them if you want. The annoying thing is all post people make after complaining about his post. At least he is commenting on the subject.

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  7. On Oct 2, 2007 @ 10:23 pm, System Said:

    At least he is commenting on the subject?

    You assume he is based on his gibberish. I can’t make heads or tails of some of the recent posts.

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  8. On Oct 2, 2007 @ 10:34 pm, apeguero Said:

    Why doesn’t eBay use their own services and up Skype up for a 5 day auction, no reserve, with the starting price being .01?

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  9. On Oct 2, 2007 @ 11:50 pm, Crutnacker Said:

    Ebay’s real business savvy is the fact that they were there first. Buying Skype made as much sense as it would if Microsoft tried to buy Sara Lee.

    The real mystery is why no real competitor has arisen to take down Ebay. Google should do a free auction site just to be mean.

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  10. On Oct 3, 2007 @ 12:36 am, Galvatron Said:

    Lol google aution site that would be interesting btw sory I won’t go away.

    Closing time james.

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  11. On Oct 3, 2007 @ 8:11 am, zac Said:

    Poundcake XP with service pack 2! Gotta get me some of that!

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