
Is The Clock Ticking on Skype? - jacquesm
http://gigaom.com/2009/09/18/is-the-clock-ticking-on-skype/
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idm
Like most stories, there are two sides to the issue.

It seems like the P2P tech was a big "insider info" advantage that enabled
Volpi to close the deal. The fact that he knew Skype could be implemented
without the P2P backend was reassuring enough to the investors that they
purchased Skype.

My understanding is that the very fact Volpi had that information is kindof
sketchy, kindof "insidery." In other words, Skype might never have been sold
if the buyers didn't already know they could cut out the P2P backend, but they
would never have had that knowledge if Volpi hadn't worked so closely with
Skype's tech.

~~~
jacquesm
So, the real question then is why does that matter ? If they decide to cut out
the P2P backend shouldn't that be their freedom to choose to do so ?

If ebay wants to unload skype I can imagine that the best candidate to unload
it to would be the one that knows the most about it.

Most parties that want to buy something will want to know everything there is
possibly to know about it before they buy it. Technical due-dilligence would
normally look exactly at factors like this, and as far as I know it is ebay
that is selling, not J&F.

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budu3
Wow how ruthless. If this is true then I wonder if it will make people more
weary of doing business with them. Especially, their venture fund.

~~~
jacquesm
I agree, maybe they think that it won't make any difference to them in the
future but I'm not so sure.

This does not reflect very well on them. They cleaned up pretty good when they
sold their project to ebay, these lawsuits are very ugly indeed.

Kazaa was spun out in a pretty sneaky fashion as well, they jumped all over
the place to stay ahead of the law, then they made skype on the back of the
tech they wrote to make kazaa work. So effectively all this harks back to the
kazaa days.

Ebay messed up royally when they bought it, but as far as I know it was paid
several times over, no need to try to do another round of extortion.

Skype is a pretty good product on top of a nice piece of networking code but
nothing that could not be done again.

By risking the future of skype (and possibly even ebay) they really show they
don't care about anybody but themselves.

Not the best tag to have on you as a business person.

In Europe everybody that wants to be somebody is still fawning over them
though, I wonder how long that will last.

~~~
Herring
> _Skype is a pretty good product on top of a nice piece of networking code
> but nothing that could not be done again._

It's about the network effects. That makes it almost impossible to duplicate.

~~~
panic
Unless it shuts down.

