"EBay Inc is in talks to acquire Internet-telephony company Skype Technologies SA for $2 billion to $3 billion, according to people familiar with the matter, in a deal that would represent a dramatic shift in strategy for the world's largest online auction site," reports The Wall Street Journal [paid subscription required].
The Journal says talks "could fall apart," and that Skype "has been in active discussions with other technology companies, and none has led to a deal". However, it adds:
While other online leaders such as Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. have pushed the boundaries of their offerings, eBay has stuck more directly to the business of acting as middleman between individual buyers and sellers. But the person familiar with the situation said that eBay is keen on adding services that make it easier for its customers to buy and sell goods online, as it did when it acquired the electronic-payment processing service PayPal in 2002.
Comment: eBay hasn't folllowed Google, Yahoo and even Amazon (with its A9 search engine) in expanding into new areas, but it's not clear that buying Skype would do that either. After all, eBay has not made PayPal into a web-dominating online payment system, and nowadays it seems to be used mainly on eBay. Would Skype go the same way? If so, it doesn't represent "represent a dramatic shift in strategy," just more of the same.
Related: We interviewed Niklas Zennstrom, the co-founder of Skype, in July. Here's what he had to say.
