More buyout rumors for Skype

The rumor that eBay is eyeing Skype as its next acquisition already has a punchline: (posted on Fark.com) that talks will fail at the last moment when "some jerk" bids $3 billion, plus fifty cents.

The epicenter of the news was the Wall Street Journal, which said eBay is considering paying between US$2 billion and $3 billion to acquire Skype. The report quotes unnamed sources familiar with the talks.

Searchenginejournal.com has this post, which says the idea makes "total sense" because
"eBay is at its core a community and eBay owned Paypal is one of the preferred ways of buying Skype Out credits."

A more in-depth look comes to us from The Guardian, which looks at the acquisition wars between the search giants, then dryly comments that eBay's motivation for the deal is in line with its evident strategy of "seeking to diversify from its key business of online auctions, a market which it dominates."

ITWorld speculates on whether the deal makes sense. Analysts in the article question whether the acquisition makes sense. After all, why not partner instead of acquire, and thus reduce the associated risk.

Others in the article expressed doubt that a Skype/eBay tie-up would ultimately result in anything other than the combined companies emerging as a minority player down the road.

A Gartner analyst was bullish on the deal, saying that it represented a chance for the combined companies to move aggressively into offering a Web services platform for its customers to develop their own applications.

Whether all this will come to pass is anyone's guess just now. What no one's talking about is what would happen if Skype decided to remain independent.

David Utter over at Webpronews opines that if Skype continues to sniff at an acquisition in the $3b range, they should have their heads examined. Play coy for much longer, Utter says, and the Microsofts and Yahoo!s of the world will flank you, and then you'll no longer be the belle of the ball.