3Oct2007
In late 2005 eBay acquired Skype, the number one internet-calling company, for $2.6 billion. Today Skype’s price is half that one.
Yesterday, eBay confirmed that it overpaid for Skype showing once more that value never is equal to price. About half billion of the charge were to pay Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, Skype’s founders, and other early Skype’s investors. Although it looks like big money, they could have earnt up to $1.7 billion if Skype would have met targets for users.
At the same time, eBay announced that Zennström and Friis will leave the company but while the former is leaving CEO post for a nonexecutive chairman post in board of directors, the latter will no longer play a role in the company. This situation leave both them more time to spend on Joost!
9Feb2007
Yahoo! has just launched a new service called Yahoo Pipes which offers users the ability to easily create data mashups from remixing popular feed types, including Yahoo! Search, Google Base, Flickr photos and any RSS feed on the web. Yahoo! describes it as an interactive feed aggregator and manipulator that allows you to create feeds that are more powerful, useful and relevant.
Pipes also provides a set of functional modules to let users manipulate and transform data in oder to get the desired output. This set includes a powerful content analyzer, several data formatters, sorting modules and even translating services using BabelFish translating engine.
All these modules are integrated in an easy-to-use visual drag and drop editor that simplifies the job of building a mashup without writing a single line of code. The resulting feed can be for private use or shared with the Internet community. As Tim O’Reilly has defined it:
Yahoo!’s new Pipes service is a milestone in the history of the internet. It’s a service that generalizes the idea of the mashup, providing a drag and drop editor that allows you to connect internet data sources, process them, and redirect the output.
According to Google, their mission is to organize the information. In this case Yahoo! has won a battle letting the users create more organized, filtered and useful information by theirselves. Could it be a step towards Web3.0 in which users not only contribute but can take advantage of the rest of information their own way and share it? What comes next? Only time will tell.
11Jan2007
Looks like the mergers & acquisitions market is really hot these days. Following yesterday’s MyBlogLog acquisition by Yahoo! and StudiVZ a few days ago, today we find that eBay has agreed to buy StubHub, an online ticket reseller, for $310 million in cash.
StubHub was founded in 2000 and made more than $400 million in gross ticket sales last year. It offers a secure way for buyers and sellers to exchange tickets as StubHub acts as a middleman and includes money-back guarantee. According to Bill Cobb, president of eBay North America Marketplaces, it’s a perfect complement to eBay’s tickets business. What comes next? Only time will tell.
21Dec2006
Another world’s #1 Internet company bites the dust. After spending more than $250 million since 2002 and losing more than $8 million in 2005 (doubling 2004’s loses), eBay has thrown the towel and, remembering that old motto “if you can’t beat them, join them”, eBay has announced a joint venture with a local mobile Internet company called Tom Online.
Tom Online, Beijing-based and owned by the millionaire Li Ka-Shing, will contribute $20 million and provide the local management and market knowledge, taking a 51% stake in the new company. On the other side, eBay will contribute $40 million taking a 49% stake.
Similar steps were taken by other Internet giants like Google and Yahoo. Looks like you cannot win in China without Chinese partners. Who comes next? Only time will tell.