Tech Correspondent: Skype Founders planning to buy it back from eBay

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Skype Founders planning to buy it back from eBay

Skype the famous online peer to peer phone service is in news again. Its founder Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis are talking to equity firm Warburg Pincus, KKR, Elevation Partners and Providence Equity Partners to raise money to buy Skype back from eBay. As per the New York Times eBay has not commented anything on it.

Its quite clear that eBay don't see any synergy between its online business and Skype. They have realized that its seller prefer emails instead of relying on Skype. And another reason is eBay long pending lawsuit against Joltid . This company holds the technological rights of the peer to peer technology used by Skype. This company happens to be of Skype's founder. eBay has understood that without this technology eBay has to rewrite new technology for it from scratch. As eBay market share is dwindling it will be easy way to pump some capital in its core business.

Skype has booked $550 million in revenue in 2008 and equally important as PayPal. However, now

it is time for eBay to decide that do they want to pursue lengthy lawsuit and develop new technology for Skype or sell it off.