The hyperbole was coming through loud and clear this week as eBay (EBAY:Nasdaq - news - research - Cramer's Take) rolled out its linkup with Internet phone company Skype.
eBay, the San Jose, Calif., Web auction site, said it would pay as much as $4.1 billion to acquire Luxembourg-based Skype.
That price tag may appear dubious, given Skype's 2004 revenue of just $7 million. But as is so often the case, big Internet deals spur people to think in bigger terms.
"Communications is at the heart of e-commerce and community," said eBay chief Meg Whitman.
"We feel we can really change the way that people communicate, shop and do business online," said Skype co-founder Janus Friis. Why, eBay even promised that the deal would "increase the velocity of trade on eBay" by allowing buyers and sellers to talk over the phone.
For the most penetrating analysis, though, we turn to technology entrepreneur Jeff Pulver, who humbly described himself in a recent press release as a voice-over-Internet-protocol "thought leader and industry pioneer."
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Pulver, who was involved in the startup of Skype rival Vonage and has been promoting online phone service for a decade now, gushed at some length on how the eBay-Skype linkup is "transformational." But he also said something less predictable.
"If you take the elements of eBay, including the micro-payments capability of PayPal and, now, the IP-based communications capabilities of Skype," Pulver said Monday, "we may be seeing the formation of the next Reuters."
Hold on. Reuters (RTRSY:Nasdaq ADR - news - research - Cramer's Take), the financial services company that this summer reported its first quarter of underlying growth in four years? The London-based publisher that has spent the past two years cutting 20% of its staff to bring costs in line with hard-hit revenue? The outfit whose shares have bounced sharply off their early 2003 lows but remain less than half their level of five years ago?
"I meant to say 'the next-generation Reuters,'" Pulver emails in response to a request for clarification. "I think that when you look at the convergence of the computing industry and the communications industry a lot of the 'could be' is now becoming possible. We need to open our minds beyond what we thought was traditional telecom and traditional computing and look at what the second derivative products from these combinations could be."
So eBay's spending $4.1 billion to become the new Reuters? Wow, anything really is possible. |
