Hoping to lead by example, eBay
It's only Tuesday, and this week has already seen eBay return social bookmarking site StumbleUpon to its founders and reportedly acquire a significant stake in South Korea's Gmarket
Tack on the weekend report out of The New York Times claiming that Skype's founders are in talks with private equity firms to buy back the popular voice chat platform, and you have eBay in a trading frenzy.
Is this a company or a frenetic fantasy football league player, wheeling and dealing before the trading deadline?
eBay paid $75 million to acquire StumbleUpon two years ago, so letting it go would barely be a flesh wound for a company that oozes cash flow like eBay consistently does. Skype, on the other hand, cost eBay billions. And even though StumbleUpon's growth may have stalled in eBay's hands, Skype continues to broaden its global footprint.
Sure, eBay may have overpaid for Skype, but it certainly doesn't have to give it away. This isn't a bidding war that needs to limit itself to the site's birth parents.
Wouldn't Skype look good at Google
Even a telco giant may find a threat like Skype to be a better fit in its portfolio, though you can probably cross out smaller telephony players like Vonage
Either way, it seems as if eBay is having its own garage sale. Beyond PayPal, is there really any eBay property that isn't touchable?
More items in the eBay bid basket:
- The company's latest quarterly report was a dud.
- Things just haven't been the same since Meg Whitman went away.
- It's So Much Worse Than You Think