I am not going to lie; I have only been using Skype for five months.
At my last position it was used in office to ask a quick question or discuss lunch plans. My first interview with Andrew, aka The Brand Chef, was over Skype. Last night I was going through my old business magazines and ran across an Inc. article from 2005. The article was about eBay buying Skype for $2.6 billion. I thought to myself, ‘Didn’t Microsoft just buy Skype?’ EBay admitted to overpaying for Skype in 2007. This could be true, but perhaps they just bought it too early.
Image Credit: http://awesomedc.com/
Fast-forward to May of 2011 when Microsoft announced an agreement to acquire Skype for $8.5 billion. Is Skype really worth three times what it was worth in 2007? Soon after the agreement was announced The Financial Times said that this may once again lead to a new tech bubble; since there isn’t a clear value long term for these new companies. This acquisition comes on the heals of LinkedIn’s plan of an initial public offering. It seems to only be a question of time before Facebook and Groupon also go public. I for one will look into investing in these companies, but fear they will start out at a high per stock price only to drop a couple quarters later. If Google’s IPO is any indicator the stocks will have vast highs and lows. On second thought I will continue to use these free services to there fullest and leave the gambling to others. After all we know what happens to bubbles.
