Skype and eBay: Keep ‘em separated?

I haven’t really been a heavy user of VoIP services, unless you count the voice feature of GoogleTalk, which leaves off the main capability of being able to call POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) numbers. In that vein, I was a dabbler with Skype last year, during their “free unlimited calls to the US and Canada” promotion, but as the year progressed I found myself really appreciating that ability to make a quick call to a friend in Boston, DC or Montreal without having to mess around with phone cards or paying a relatively steep monthly rate with Vonage or the other more hardware-focused VoIP companies. (Although that seems to be changing.) I liked it enough that I took advantage of the current price promotion, in effect to the end of January 2007, to continue the unlimited service for 14.95 USD for a year. Now that’s what I call good marketing, though I wonder if they’re taking much of a loss on it? I would suspect a fair chunk, if the normal cost is 35 USD.

Now, people continue to wonder why eBay hasn’t fully integrated Skype, and what the purchase was all about. In my opinion, if Skype can sustain its brand and its success on its own, why even bother integrating it with eBay? Or at least, why bother forcing a convergence that may not even exist? Yes, there are opportunities for eBay to use Skype for advertising channels, I’m guessing, or perhaps to use Skype as a means of easily communicating with sellers who aren’t always at a computer (not unlike Meebo’s “Meebo Me” functionality to connect people via IM) or perhaps even vice versa to allow sellers at their eBay software to contact buyers on the go, but I don’t think the purchase of Skype should be measured by how much cross-company potential there is. A good company is a good company, and though the standard business line if they didn’t feel there were compelling synergies (as they say in the jargon) is to spin-off Skype as a separate company, I don’t think eBay is too unhappy with their purchase and those that are still scratching their heads about the purchase should take a look at Berkshire Hathaway and its myriad collection of unrelated businesses.