Like Rupert Murdoch before her, eBay’s CEO Meg Whitman said that VoIP will be free within five years, according to this Business Week TechBeat piece by Rob Hof. “Whitman admitted that rampant competition no doubt will drive what little Skype, or anyone else, can charge for Internet phone calls to zero within a few years.”
So what about the $4.1 billion eBay paid to buy VoIP pioneer Skype? Well, at least for the time being, Skype’s business is booming, Whitman said. And in any event, eBay has lots of plans to monetize the service including integrating voice connections into all of its sites, including not only eBay but also Rent.com, Shopping.com, all of its 150 Kijiji classifed-ad sites and PayPal. Moreover, eBay in working on a pay-per-call advertising service that will use Skype.
Cynthia Brumfield at 7:19 AM|Comments(0)
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