October 1, 2007 4:17 PM PDT
Skype = failed acquisition for eBay
eBay is planning to write down $1.4 billion in Skype-related charges, reports the Wall Street Journal.
The Internet auction giant said the charges include $530 million to complete payments related to its 2005 acquisition of Luxembourg-based Skype. The other roughly $900 million in charges reflect goodwill impairment due to "the updated long-term financial outlook for Skype."
This is too bad, since the Skype service has so much promise, and Skype could fit nicely with someone else. I never could understand the alleged synergies between the two, but now that I'm a happy Skype user, I hope eBay figures out where to put Skype, because it's really quite a good system (better than Vonage, I'm finding).
How about Skype + Cisco? Or Skype + Microsoft, for that matter? Or, really, Skype + anyone besides eBay? :-) Seriously, the deal was driven by hype - it was a case of eBay wanting to buy something hot to juice its then sagging sexiness. It didn't work, but eBay is chugging along, anyway.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
