Josh Silverman Goes Platinum
Skype was recently sold for a valuation of $2.75 billion! Wow. That could buy a whole lot of California Burritos. It's also probably the reason behind Skype CEO Josh Silverman's goofy smile during his interview with TechCrunch about the sale. eBay ended up walking away with $1.9 billion in cash, a note in the principle amount of $125 million, and about 30% ownership remaining in Skype.
Probably a good investment if you look at the numbers - Skype is adding 300,000 new users every day! 33% of the usage is video, and Skype's communication minutes make up for 8% of the world's total vocal/video communication. And at a revenue stream of $185 million a quarter... wow.
In the video interview with Silverman, he mentioned...
that Chrome OS doesn't allow users to download software, so unless Google and Skype work something out, Skype might not be an option on some netbooks next year. However Silverman says if Google wants to talk about involving Skype in the new operating system, he'd "certainly be interested in having that conversation."
With the progress Skype is making, and now that it's free to operate independently - I'm not too worried about its future or the future of Silverman's wallet. They'll do just fine. What I want to know is, will Skype become like the next Wal Mart or Google - so powerful that an evenly matched competitor might be hard to find?
Probably a good investment if you look at the numbers - Skype is adding 300,000 new users every day! 33% of the usage is video, and Skype's communication minutes make up for 8% of the world's total vocal/video communication. And at a revenue stream of $185 million a quarter... wow.
In the video interview with Silverman, he mentioned...
that Chrome OS doesn't allow users to download software, so unless Google and Skype work something out, Skype might not be an option on some netbooks next year. However Silverman says if Google wants to talk about involving Skype in the new operating system, he'd "certainly be interested in having that conversation."
With the progress Skype is making, and now that it's free to operate independently - I'm not too worried about its future or the future of Silverman's wallet. They'll do just fine. What I want to know is, will Skype become like the next Wal Mart or Google - so powerful that an evenly matched competitor might be hard to find?
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