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There is more to this story as well.
The technology underpinning Skype is P2P. The guy basically took the technology, and went off and formed up Joost to do TV stuff with the same technology.
Strike one for Ebay, you should have bought the technology from the guy, not just the product.
Second, they bought a company with no true path to significant revenue levels. The entire growth had occured when everything was free. As soon as they started to push the pay for play features, people left the room.
Strike 2 for Ebay.
The third part hasn't come yet, but it will. All of those technologies are dependant on end users running the software and allowing others (often without their full knowledge or understanding) to use their computer as a node to carry traffic. All of these types of sites leach bandwidth from all over. ISPs are grumbling about stuff like this, and it only takes a few major carriers to say "no more" for this business model to come crashing down.
Ebay, strike three isn't far away. Spin this shit off before you have to write it all down.
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