The net is still shocked by Microsoft's buyout of Skype for $8.5 billion. The adjectives whopping, astonishing, unbelievable, incredible, crazy and stupid are among the most repeated when describing the price Microsoft paid for the VoIP company. People do not forget that when eBay purchased Skype in 2005 it did so for $2.5 billion. That price also seemed very high at that time, people were still remembering the excesses of the dotcom era. However back in 2005 when eBay bought it, Skype was still a promise, a young and innovative company with lots of room to grow and lots of potential for doing so.
While Skype is still young and innovative it can not be considered a promise anymore, but a fully mature company. Its earning reports matter like any other company's and the last one showed a $7 million loss. It has a user base of more than 663 million but as of now, Skype is making a slender profit of approximately 1.30$ per user. These are some numbers that do not help justify the price Microsoft has paid.
But Microsoft knows this, its is impossible to justify the price paid based on the numbers, so they are focusing on the intangible instead. Microsoft talks about seamless integration with its Xbox360 network, about the synergies between Skype and Facebook (which was thought to be a bidder for Skype too and has a partnership with Microsoft) and about integrating it with its latest Windows Phone 7 mobile phone OS.
All of these look like legit reasons for Microsoft to buy Skype; but seriously: who does think these synergies are going to compensate the price paid? Not even in the long term...
For me, the real reason for Microsoft to purchase Skype is mainly:
