Unheard of price of $8

Last week we saw Microsoft paying an unheard of price of $8.5B to acquire Skype, the free VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) company from Europe. When eBay bought Skype few years ago for something like $2.3B, we thought that was crazy. The theory seemed sensible to some folks - auctioning parties can talk using Skype if they want. A friend of mine said, to tell the truth not talking is the best part of the eBay model. Sellers and buyers are united by eBay anonymously. Goods are sold, payment is made, all very smoothly. No one needs to use voice. For that you go to a supermarket or a flea market.

The free part of Skype

Once you take away the free part of Skype, its users will drop drastically. Using it as a front-end to sell more back-end servers like Sharepoint seems far-fetched. Even the innovation behind Skype is clumsy in the best case. Blending that with .Net would be fun. As well the appeal of multi-platform advantage is suspect in accordance with Microsoft's ownership. Its motto is Windows-only way or the highway.