Today eBay agreed to sell certain assets of its Skype subsidiary to a group of private investors led by Avaya’s owner, Silver Lake and including a firm founded by Netscape’s founder (and eBay board member) Marc Andreesen, as well as Index Partners. Here is Skype Journal’s coverage of the blessed event.

Under the terms of the proposed deal, investors will pay eBay $1.9 billion for 65% of the company’s equity. This places a value of $2.75 billion on the enterprise. There is very little clarity about what specific assets the investor group will control; nor what specific rights accompany eBay’s 35% equity in the company. Nor is it clear whether completion of the transaction depends on settlement of the messy lawsuit between eBay and Skype founders over the JoltID, the very foundation of Skype’s peer-to-peer communications protocol.

For devotees of Recombinant Telephony, any deal that extracts Skype from the management of eBay is good news. The mega-auction site’s plans for the VoIP carrier were never clear (and never executed). In the mean time, the fact that Skype still managed to generate $551 million so far this year from its 60 million or so users shows the power of large numbers, even if the biggest attraction is “free” international calling.

Under its present regime, Skype has forged a relationship with Voxeo (not to mention the Digium and Asterisk crowd) to integrate IP-telephony with voice self-service applications. It has also extended its reach to the mobile world by creating downloadable apps for the iPhone, as well as smartphones running Symbian and Windows Mobile (on certain vendors handsets). Skype for the Blackberry was pre-announced in March for delivery in May. The point is, Skype could be so much more, and – now that it is out from under eBay’s control – perhaps it will be.

Categories: Articles