Porque a eBay comprou a Skype: cherchez l'argent
Os analistas tradicionais andam um bocado aos papéis para responder a esta questão intrigante: porque gastou a eBay dois mil e oitenta milhões de euros para comprar a Skype?
É preciso procurar as respostas junto de quem sabe. O segredo do negócio não é nem os +100 milhões de licitantes regulares da eBay junto dos 53 milhôes de clientes do VoIP da Skype, nem fornecer assistência ao cliente da eBay através dos telefones Skype. Procurem o dinheiro. Encontrarão o PayPal. Reflexões adicionais na entrada estendida, mais abaixo.
A ler:
«The right thing to do is to share more marketplace revenues with participants as their share of the product increases and as their ability to re-use or re-sell their "microchunk" decreases. Today, I added the future skype / eBay professional services to the model.» --> Enrique Rodriguez em poductivity
«Banking is big, slow, cartel-like and lacking in innovation. eBay is unbundling part of the transaction chain using Paypal, and re-intermediating the settlement process. Remember that Paypal is largely a virtual payment mechanism, used to front other payment services. Communications services are a natural generator of the small transactions that Paypal thrives on due to its low comission fee structure compared to credit cards. Skype and Paypal also have an international footprint, leaving many parochial banks struggling to offer a competing product. They fit together nicely.» --> Martin em Telepocalypse
«eBay lives off skimming margins - it's a volume business, just like a telco - but without infrastructure costs. Any services they spawn will have to fit the least-interference "get them together, skim a percentage" model.
Skype has minimal infrastructure, and its revenue model is mostly the same - but with an interesting potential for volume deals, since their parasitism (i.e., delivering service atop other networks) allows them to have high volumes of micro-transactions with 90% gross margin.
Both models are an easy fit in cash-flow terms, and they have PayPal to glue them together and become a micro-transaction clearing house - which, incidentally, they will have to position carefully in order to fall under banking regulations (i.e., in some countries they may be legally classified as a banking entity).» --> Rui Carmo em Tao of Mac