EBay to buy Internet phone firm Skype - Financial Times - MSNBC.com

OK, so I get it ... I get why eBay would buy Skype. Putting buyers and sellers in contact with each other through a mechanism eBay can control. It makes sense.

What doesn't make sense is why eBay would pay so goddamned much for it. Two and a half to four billion dollars. I put that in text because the numbers don't seem as real as the words.

You can't tell me eBay couldn't have gotten the same functionality far cheaper. I mean, everyone is doing VOIP now. What precisely did Skype have that was valued so highly?

Now I read that Oracle is buying Siebel for nearly six billion. My blog has a Google PageRank of 5 ... anyone want to offer me a measly million to keep doing what I'm doing? I promise not to spend it all in once place.