There's a piece in this week's Economist that looks at eBay's acquisition of Skype, and rumours that Microsoft could be looking at a stake in AOL, and asks the same question we've all been wondering: is the bubble back?
"The Skype deal is absolutely a return to the 1999 mentality," says Pip Coburn of Coburn Ventures, a technology-strategy firm. It and many of the other recent and mooted internet deals seem to be based on little more than the belief of management that everything is going to change dramatically in the next few years, in highly unpredictable ways, and so all options need to be covered. Given that mentality, says Mr Coburn, a manager "can pretty much justify paying any price".
There's a difference, it says, in as much as companies are making sure there's cash - not just share options. But there's still major concern that the losers are going to fall through the floor.
I'm not as sceptical as the Economist, which tends to take an establishment-line view of most things new, because I don't think success is only measured by the bottom line. And I don't think that we're in the same place as we were five years ago, either technologically or socially. Yes, there will be some losers who have paid big money for dud companies, but I'm not sure we're yet to see a spewing of cash-crazed speculation from investors trying to make a quick buck. When that arrives, then I'll be grabbing the tinfoil hat.
