That is the sapling fertilized by $2.6 billion and change. Has anyone seen this before? More details here, but hard for me to translate. Gizmodo has more information as well. (Hat Tip, Zatz’s Cool!)
a lot of folks have overlooked the potential for PayPal-Skype integration as the real upside behind the eBay-Skype deal. the existing userbase for Skype is an interesting demographic — tens of millions of international users, many of whom have cross-border interests (read: family / immigrant remittances, ebay sales, etc).
whether or not the price tag was justified, look for eBay to promote growth coming out of further Skype-PayPal opportunities… especially since growth has been slowing down in many of the eBay marketplace geographies.
Skype together with PayPal as a combined communications payment API platform has a lot of promise. only time will tell if eBay exec mgmt team allows their younger acquisitions enough freedom to deliver on this potential… or conversely, whether they get bogged down with succession politics & other corporate bureaucracy.
history as a guide, i’d say it’s an even bet.
(but i’m still rooting for my old peeps to pull it out ;)
[full disclosure: i used to work for PayPal]
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment