The future does not look very bright for Skype, a day after Google announced it will launch a potential competitor and eBay's CEO said that the online auction company had basically failed in its efforts to intergrate the voice-over-IP service.
Yesterday, eBay CEO John Donahoe told analysts that the company is "done apologizing for Skype" and will focus eBay "where we can win." He indicated that eBay will cease trying to integrate the service into its existing online auction offerings and focus on running Skype as an independent business. eBay acquired Skype for $2.6 billion in 2005.
Hot on the heels of Donohoe's statements, Google announced its forthcoming Google Voice service, a revamp of GrandCentral, which it acquired back in 2007. The product was originally a personal phone management service that allowed users to have one central number that rang multiple phone numbers for a user, as well as a centralized voicemail box. Google's updates include low-cost Internet telephony services, SMS sending and retrieving, free outgoing calls to any U.S. number, and full voicemail services including voicemail transcripts.
While Google Voice is rolling out first to existing GrandCentral users before opening up to the masses, it's clear that eBay needs to do more than simply focus on Skype as a standalone company. Google has a huge pool of existing users and a history of rolling out applications that are more stable and feature-rich than Skype. eBay will need to make some serious investments in developing Skype's functionality to compete with the Google juggernaut -- or face selling the service for pennies on the dollar.
Screenshot of Google Voice running on Android via Google Voice Features tour.
Comments
Ummm. Before you throw out the editorial commentary perhaps you should get some experience in the space? History of rolling out applications more stable and feature rich than Skype!? The Google service (which is not actually even available to all existing GrandCentral users - let alone anyone new) has literally NOTHING in it that Skype doesn't already do - except for transcription. And Skype has a LOT that Google doesn't.
Ignorant US-based communications commentators love to dump on Skype but it continues to have an order of magnitude greater user base than its competitors. It also - despite what a very large number of vested-interest players will tell you - is quite reliable.
As an example of precisely why Google is the one that has to worry in this space, during the TWO YEARS that Google has taken to make a relatively small number of improvements, Skype caught up to and passed the things that were in the service Google bought.
For a look at the real story - check out www.dialbuzz.com
While Skype may have a userbase larger than its competitors, it's far smaller than Google's. Skype is also owned by a company that admittedly has had no idea of what to do with it, and can't integrate it with its other services, something Google manages to do on a regular basis. Add in free phone calls to U.S. numbers (which Skype does not have) and Google will steamroll Skype in the States, giving Skype, at best, an offshore userbase.
As for its stability, my regular crashes when using Skype would argue that it's not the most stable application.
Cyndy - did you read what eBay said? They did NOT say they didn't know what to do - they said they were tired of having to deal with accusations about failure to integrate with eBay itself - when every single VOIP expert commentator for three years has been saying that the integration - even if it ever happened - was a side issue and that Skype was a stand alone business. Now when eBay says they are going to run it as a stand alone business you interpret that as saying they don't know what to do with it. And despite your crashes, the continual user base growth disagrees.
As for size of userbase - I would be interested in knowing what you mean by that. People who use google in some way ? Those aren't users. People who have a gmail account? Do they USE that gmail account? The figurre I gave was ACTIVE users - Skype has over 200 million people with accounts. But the actual question is how many people are going to sign up to use Google Voice? Free won;t do it. There are over ten free internet based calling services within the US. They are not making headway against Skype. Of course Google is bigger and has more chance of succeeding, but it got nowhere with Gtalk, so I am not expecting that to necessarily improve.
My point is that jumping up and down and predicting a huge boost for Google and the death of Skype is more that a little premature.
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