eBay buys Skpe….
In true gamers fashion…. WTF?? This is definatly an odd-ball couple if I’ve ever seen one. Why would eBay, an auction house, buy Skype, a proprietary VoIP provider? The only thing I can see being serious about this is to make it easier for customers to contact eBay and PayPal customer service. Anything else would just be silly, considering how hard eBay makes it to even find a phone number and/or address for their place of business.
One speculation around the net has been that this is a pure defensive move, to fend off Google, Micro$oft, and various other large companies who have recently begun to enter into this market. Google, in it’s never ending quest to make cool stuff for the ‘net, came out last month with it’s Google Talk (dubbed GTalk by my friends). The VoIP capabilities in GTalk are going to be replaced with the open standard SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), and willing to “federate” with other networks. M$ decided to try to mirror (funhouse style) Google’s new VoIP/IM combo with the acquisition of Teleo, also a VoIP to PSTN (or POTS for us oldtimers) provider, but also using the SIP protocol (I’ll be surprised if M$ doesn’t change it to be a proprietary protocol once Teleo is absorbed). Of course, there is always Yahoo, who’s IM client includes a proprietary voice software.
What does all this mean? Well, it means that the largest companies are pretty much going to rule the ‘net for now. It’s going to make it hard for the little guy to get a piece of the action without large support from someone who has money to burn. All I can say is, that the next VoIP services that come out will have to be some serious “wizz-bang” to even compete with the bigboys.
I guess that’s it for this subject… Maybe more later….
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