Skype’s getting new owners, and apparently new attitude. Third party support has enabled Skype to do things it was never intended to do and this has made it more useful to millions.  Even the clueless Ebay management understood the value of third party extensions.  While Skype API’s remain open for now,  it’s pretty certain developers will change focus to more supportive platforms. Whatever the reason, this move is increadibly short sighted. The new Skype  looks even less enlightened than the old one.

Starting Friday, Skype is effectively pulling the plug on its Extras program, which was designed to help third-party developers create add-ons for Skype’s VoIP service (Windows | Mac)–like emoticon enhancements, backup services, and music player plug-ins. Unlike Firefox’s similar third-party extensions, not enough people were installing Skype Extras, Skype said in both an e-mail and in a blog post to developers.

Developers and users will have some adjustment time, though. Skype won’t certify any new submissions, but it won’t yank support for existing Extras either, that is, until their certificates expire. You’ll still be able to install existing Extras through the Windows desktop client, and you’ll still see them featured in the Skype shop. Skype will also continue to maintain its public application programming interface. (Cnet)

There’s no question the Skype grew under Ebay’s ownership. There’s also little question that it would have grown without Ebay as well. An investor groups that includes a few tekkies as well as the usual suits may help Skype realize the potential Ebay management never understood.

eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to sell its Skype communications unit in a deal valuing the business at $2.75 billion. The buyer, who will control an approximately 65 percent stake, is an investor group led by Silver Lake and includes Index Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) Investment Board. eBay is expected to
receive approximately $1.9 billion in cash upon the completion of the sale and a note from the buyer in the principal amount of $125 million. The company will retain an approximately 35 percent equity investment in Skype. The transaction, which is not subject to a financing condition, is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2009. (Wall Street Journal)

While voice communications as  a stand alone premium service is poised to crash, the VoIP landscape is changing. With major players like Google and Yahoo offering competitive services and with smaller players like SIPphone taking market share, the area is becoming very competitive. With prices already at or near zero, competition will be in features, ease of use, and for fee value add options. As more open, 4G wireless networks enable the used of open mobile devices, look for the traditional voice carriers to enter the free or nearly VoIP arena as well.

eBay’s plan to spin off Skype with an initial public offering in 2010 is being threatened by a dispute with the VoIP service’s co-founders, who still own a key part of the software.

Bloomberg reports Skype’s founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis have accused eBay of breaching a licensing deal and are threatening to yank the technology, which would disable the popular voice over internet service.

In return, eBay is suing Joltid, the company operated by Skype’s founders, in a London court to prevent the shutdown.

The Skype founders apparently retained the service’s peer-to-peer sharing technology when they sold to eBay for $2.6bn in 2005. (Which, of course, begs the question why eBay would pay all that money without ensuring they own the entire platform).

Well smart business people always work to sell the cow but license the right to the milk it produces. That appears to be what is happening here with a legal scuffle between Skype founders and eBay. So when Meg Whitman, who was the CEO that brokered that deal, plunk down the money she did not read the fine print on what she was really buying? Certainly appears that way regardless of the outcome of the lawsuit.

Would be a real blow to eBay if they lose. The value of the Skype property that they are trying to spin off would be worth less if the buyer has to pay royalities to the two gents owning the technology. Any buyer worth their salt would know this and only pay accordingly. For what they would really be buying is just the customer accounts and IT infrastructure.

There are still some fun things to watch in the IT biz.

Linky.

Here’s a sure sign that Skype, formerly heralded as the future savior of Ebay, has left the building:

And now Skype is being downright disintegrated from eBay’s services, starting with the UK website. This is what the dry announcement message reads (emphasis ours):

eBay is discontinuing Skype voice and chat buttons in listings as of 10th June 2009 in an effort to remove features with limited buyer and seller usage.

This change does not require any action on your part. We are just notifying you that as of June 10, you will no longer see the Skype voice and chat options when you list new items, they will not be included on the new item page, and they will no longer appear in your existing listings.

We appreciate your continued commitment to good communications with your customers.

Regards,
The eBay Team

(Tech Crunch)

Skype is another example of how CE’O’s often create corporate Frankensteins that never add up to the sum of their parts, let alone adding up to more.  The real profit in all of the mega deals we’re seen over the last couple of decades in tech has been in the making of the deals, not in creating shareholder value. Until shareholders wise up and stop appointing boards and CEO’s who can profit more from market arbitration than running the business, these so called “honest mistakes” will continue. Thinks Ebay’s the only example? Those who presided over the Time / Warner /AOL and HP/Compaq fiasco’s profited handsomely too. In every case, the shareholders have lost value, and the customer has not been served.

Yes, it is not like when they were riding high Skype could care less about being interoperable. Fact they were down right rude about it, setting trip wires in their own systems so third parties could not use the IM capabilities, etc. But oh now that they might be spun off and have to make a profit they come sniffing with a call for ‘interoperability’ because they smell cash in corporate accounts. –

In particular, Skype wants support for Skype calls that come in to businesses using PBXs that support Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunking, said Stefan Oberg, general manager and vice president of Skype for Business “This is an area where we’d like to cooperate with you.”

Skype has announced its Skype for SIP capability that would make the link between its calls and corporate PBXs. Oberg was seeking cooperation to make interoperability easier for corporate customers. Skype has also issued Skype for Asterisk, which enables using Skype client software as softphones in businesses that use open-source Asterisk IP PBXs.

Oberg saod the company is building a stable of channel partners who will sell Skype to businesses and developing a premium support service that businesses require in order to ensure uptime for their communications. That will include local tech support with staff that speaks the local language, he said.

The company is also working on a business control panel, software that will enable a business to buy Skype credit and distribute it among individual users within the business.

I have only one thing to say to Skype. —

You are late to the party. You want to play now YOU interop with the standard, not the other way around. You had the opportunity to have your say in the matter years ago but decided not to play. Well tough. Play with the cards you dealt yourself. The world does not owe you favors. SIP is now the defacto standard live with it.

The gall.

Linky.

Under the stewardship of it’s former CEO, Meg Whitman, Ebay spent billions buying up businesses with minimal synergies while allowing its broken core business to slide. So far, Ebay’s new management has done little to slow the exodus of buyers and sellers from its auction / marketplace site.  The spinning off of Stumble Upon could mean the current management is ready to unload these distractions.

now the company has been spun off to start life over as an independent startup, backed by new investors and the original founders.

The new company is led by co-founder Garrett Camp, who now steps into the CEO role. Co-founder Geoff Smith also joins Camp in returning to lead the company, but in an unannounced role. The company is backed by Sherpalo Ventures, Accel Partners, and August Capital. David Hornik from August Capital and Sameer Gandhi of Accel Partners join the board. (Tech Crunch)

There’s also rumblings that Skype is in play for a sale back to its original owners.

While none of this will cure Ebay’s woes, the refocusing on its marketplace is a good first step towards the fix. Another good clue for management is that at one time  Ebay almost ran itself profitably without much oversight. That was until the suits stepped in and broke it.

A tipster — a very reliable one — tells me that Skype is almost ready to launch that iPhone version, perhaps as soon as next week. CTIA Wireless, a large mobile industry trade event, kicks off in Las Vegas next Wednesday, so perhaps the announcement will be made there. I am working on getting more details, as well as screenshots of the service.

The biggest clue about Skype’s pending iPhone launch came when iSkoot decided to move on from its Skype-centric strategy. The company had been offering a client that allowed cell phone users to use Skype services. Skype already offers a Windows Mobile version of its client.

As I’ve said before, Skype will have to turn to mobile to keep its growth intact. In recent months, many services, among them Truphone and Nimbuzz, started supporting Skype in their communication clients. However, a standalone Skype client would get a lot of traction among the Skype faithful. In the meantime, I think Skype is slowly flexing its muscles and swatting away little VoIP players with some of its recent moves.

An interesting move by Skype. One that makes sense. One that is good for the end customer too. You pay Skype’s rate for an international call rather than AT&T’s rate. The question I have is how long will AT&T let that persist before they find some way to get their ‘tax’ in on the deal?

The bigger qualm is Skype itself. While the rest of the VoIP industry is coalesced around Open Standards, Skype continues to play Microsoft with it protocols. For the system as a whole it is just not good practice and does not foster interoperability.

Linky.

In an interesting move the Skype folks are releasing the SILK codec that is part of their new 4.0 platform. Now we know why that is, encourge all those third parties to write code to it. –

The wideband codec recently debuted as part of Skype 4.0 for Windows (with a Mac version coming in April.) With a claimed 400 million Skype users registered worldwide, the VoIP provider is apparently none too concerned about handing the competition keys to the kingdom without the usual charges.

Skype says it’s offering the licenses gratis to “establish a new industry-wide standard in speech processing,” ranging from web developers to chip manufacturers to mobile device makers.

SILK transfers audio between 8kHz to 12kHz - at least, that’s what Skype said, but we assumed it means 8Hz; thanks to all the readers who spotted the inconsistent numbers - compared with the 300Hz to 3.4kHz signals from most telephone companies. That means the conversation will sound clearer and more life-like, assuming both ends are using the codec.

Requiring SILK at both ends (and in between) will probably be the first hurdle for it to catch on with hardware manufacturers. If there’s a link in the communication chain not supporting wideband telephone, both sides get the same old lacking quality. But as Skype notes in the company blog, if you want to establish a new industry-wide standard, removing the cost is certainly a good start.

For Skype it is a good move. Now how about a new Linux upgrade while you are at it??

Linky.

Yes, you know who you are. You worry about EM radiation from toasters and late night knocks on the door from MaBell Phone Cops. Well you might be able to rest a little easier if you start using Skype. Especially if you can get on an European server –

The spybiz exec, who preferred to remain anonymous, confirmed that Skype continues to be a major problem for government listening agencies, spooks and police. This was already thought to be the case, following requests from German authorities for special intercept/bugging powers to help them deal with Skype-loving malefactors. Britain’s GCHQ has also stated that it has severe problems intercepting VoIP and internet communication in general.

Skype in particular is a serious problem for spooks and cops. Being P2P, the network can’t be accessed by the company providing it and the authorities can’t gain access by that route. The company won’t disclose details of its encryption, either, and isn’t required to as it is Europe based. This lack of openness prompts many security pros to rubbish Skype on “security through obscurity” grounds: but nonetheless it remains a popular choice with those who think they might find themselves under surveillance. Rumour suggests that America’s NSA may be able to break Skype encryption - assuming they have access to a given call or message - but nobody else.

The NSA may be able to do that: but it seems that if so, this uses up too much of the agency’s resources at present.

“They are saying to the industry, you get us into Skype and we will make you a very rich company,” said the industry source, adding that the obscure encryption used by the P2Pware is believed to change frequently as part of software updates.

Enjoy. Oh by the way, your hat is a little crooked.

Linky.

I like Skype. It’s a great service and the price is hard to beat. Having said this, I use it a little as possible. It could be  because I hate Skype’s proprietary resource hog clunkware suite or because Skype refuses to inter operate with a whole outside world of standards based VoIP devices and services.

The Gizmo5 gang has solved at least part of that problem by creating a bridge from the world of standards to Skype’s walled garden. Now you can “Skype” someone from any VoIP device.  This is how Skype should have worked to begin with.

Gizmo5, the company behind the formerly known as SIPphone, is launching a new gateway that allows people using any VoIP service to call Skype users and vice versa. This free Skype gateway is called OpenSky. It is typical of Michael Robertson, the man behind Gizmo, to come up with a disruptive solution that removes the barriers between VoIP services and Skype. In an email, Robertson explains:

What we’ve done is create a SIP alias for every Skype user. So if you want to call a Skype user named echo123 you simply dial echo123@opensky.gizmo5.com from any SIP aware device (which is just about every piece of VOIP equipment). Users can even have any SIP call forwarded to their Skype address using my.gizmo5.com. (Gigaom)