Skype worth dropped…

eBay, the owners of Skype, have claimed that the VoIP service is worth a whopping $2 billion…that’s great for Skype of course, being worth billions - but when you think eBay paid $2.6 billion for the VoIP provider only 4 years ago then the whole deal doesn’t look so good for eBay after all.

When eBay bought Skype in 2005, we were supposed to be preparing ourselves to see a revolution where eBay and Skype would be working together to provide stronger trade on the eBay site - however nothing happened and Skype trundled on hardly evolving at all.

This isn’t the first time eBay have bought an item for pretty much no reason and sold it on for less than they bought it for - back in 2007 eBay bought Stumbleupon for $75 million, but when they decided they didn’t want it in 2009 they sold it back to the founders for a dropped price.

The same thing could be happening with Skype now as the VoIP provider’s founders, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom are apparently rallying investors together to get $1.7 billion to buy back the software.

Skype customers from 53m to 443.2m…

However, it’s not all bad news for the Skype/eBay collaboration - since eBay bought Skype its user base went up from a meagre 53 million to 443.2 million - people seem to have understood the great deal the provider offers giving free VoIP calls from Skype to Skype.

eBay’s chief executive Jonathan Donahoe, in an interview on Bloomberg TV, said, “Two billion dollars would be a great steal. Skype is worth much more than that. There aren’t that many properties with that kind of growth.”

But why should we be choosing Skype?� Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of the VoIP provider;

Pros

As I said you can make free calls from Skype to Skype making the process far more attractive than 30p a minute phone calls from your mobile.� Throw in a webcam and the whole deal is unbelievable.� It’s shocking more people aren’t involving themselves.

Think about how expensive it would be to call abroad?� Again this is free between Skype calls - what a bargain!

Get rid of the headphones and use speakers and have the whole room involved in the conversation - you’ve got a great opportunity to have board meetings - once again for free!

Cons

The quality isn’t always great - if you want to chat with your parents on the other side of the world you might want to leave it until 3am on a Tuesday morning so the server isn’t overloaded and you can maintain a picture for more than 10 minutes.

The webcam can also affect the sound quality so that can also be an issue an there can often be background noise picked up - but let’s be honest…it’s free between Skype calls so if you’re complaining you don’t deserve the service!

Skype?

Are you using Skype?� Are you against VoIP?� Tell us your VoIP reasons…