Why eBay Is Buying Skype

Here's my quick take, below, an edited version of which will appear in a few hours at businessweek.com. CEO Meg Whitman & Co. gave an impassioned rationale for the deal. I can certainly see that if Skype meets its ambitious goals, the deal could pay off eventually. It's also a heckuva lot of money for a nascent business, no matter what the growth and the promise--and one in an entirely new area in which eBay has no experience. No matter how you look at it, it's a whale of a bet.

UPDATE: Ross Mayfield has a good reminder that markets are conversations, as the Cluetrain Manifesto made clear years ago now. I'm still not sure that's enough to make the deal pencil out without a lot of luck, but it's certainly true that eBay was built on the notion of keeping the lines of communication open. If Skype can put that dynamic into overdrive, it'll be worth it--at some point.