Fake money to buy company selling fake product. Wall St at it again. I don't see how Skype is worth $2.75 billion.

The problem is no cell phone carrier wants Skype on their data network, and until that changes it's going to really block progress.

I'm still trying to figure out why ebay bought skype in the first place.

Me think it was done for the sake of fighting Google Voice down the road.

I personally think skype misses something that MSN messenger has.
Many people I know feel better with messenger, perhaps it's just the icons, or the layout or the extra things like gifts or programs or games...
Also, with the emerge of facebook, I think people feel like they keep in touch with just about everyone. The need for direct messaging service might decrease a bit.
People have cellphones, can text message eachother, and can go online fill out blogs, or use MSN.
I myself stopped using IRC, or skype a long time ago.
I stopped using MSN for about 2 years now.
I mainly use facebook, and find that is enough for me, next to my hotmail, which is more person to person.

We can always call our near friends. I don't think there is any lack in ways of communicating.
I think clients like trillian, yahoo messenger, skype, etc.. they will see less and less people connecting to it...
I think it's a dying program, that has not seen many structural changes, facelifts or so, in other words, much like netscpe will be forgotten, in oblivion.

I suppose my deposit for Skype credits is fake too...

Someone has to ask. Did they sell it on eBay? :^)

I wonder the same thing. I don't use Skype, I could care less where it goes, if it goes away, all the same to me.

How is it fake? I pay $3/month and I get to call as much as I want to as many land lines as I want (though there is a cap of 10,000 minutes). I pay real money that I earned and I get a real service. Tell me how that is fake?

Hopefully this will give it the creative independence to expand and change in its market.

Yes, a home phone service based off your computer is only payable with fake money

If your girlfriend/brother/buddy had to move away for business for more than several months you would re-appreciate instant messengers with voice and video capabilities at almost zero cost for sure

Oh god, a great news! Ebay was by far not the greatest company to push what Skype could have been now.

I wonder who in their right mind would bid 2.75 Billion on an ebay auction?!

I mean, in real life, you would think your lawyers, accountants and every tom/dick/harry would be going through the books before you would ever consider any sizable purchase.

^ I suppose ultimately this is just advertising that Skype is for sale. Good publicity for Ebay too.

What are you talking about?

Skype isn't an IM client at its core, it's a telecommunications platform. You'd see an instant reason for Skype if you had a friend in another country. For instance, my wife calls me using Skype when I'm in Europe for business. If she calls my German cell directly its 24 cents a minute, if she calls my hotel room it's 3 cents a minute. Great thing is she doesn't have to be at a PC to do it. Skype will let you setup a local number that acts as a relay for phone calls abroad so she calls that number and it relays to my German numbers.

Now you might be thinking that's still expensive but to call me in Germany from her cell phone was going to cost upwards of $1.2 a minute, so Skype is seriously cheaper.

Skype is a worldwide use service. My wife uses it all the time to talk to family and friends in europe. most of the time it costs us nothing but once or twice a month we call a landline and it cost pennies. We have tried most if not all the other services like this and skype is by far the best in multiple respects. With people now starting to use it with their cellphones I only see it growing.

I use skype for gaming, prefer it over Teamspeak or Ventrilo since its much easier to setup and use for most people I play games with. Since many of my gaming friends are from overseas, skype's world wide service is great. My parents also uses it to talk to my grandparents and other relatives oversea, its simple enough for them to use it. Best thing is skype is VoIP so both sides just need internet connection/

twitter and facebook are fake companies, sadly they will probably figure out how to make money before skype, a legitimately USEFUL service.

same problem... skype is FREE! cell phone companies HATE 'FREE'

they want to charge you for calls, MMS, TXTs and data, makes it looks like your getting lots of features for your money, when realistically, they could roll all of these features into a single data plan.. They want as much control as possible, so they can rip you off at every turn. like apple, but telcos are even worse.

Skype is the best IM client ever created. Everyone should use it.

Microsoft - Buy Skype, include it with the operating system, charge a little extra for it.. There ya go every pc in world has free voip thrown in..

combine it with games for windows live, messenger, internet explorer then free communication device - microsoft charge 1 p per minute to land lines then they would make money too, have bing online - search companies and contact them on skype. Job done