Despite their best efforts to screw up the Mac client, I still love Skype both as a consumer service and as an independent company. Back when eBay decided to spin out Skype to private investors instead of waiting and spinning it out to eBay holders I was surprised (to put it mildly). Now I am equally surprised at the thought of Skype selling to Google or Facebook instead of going public. Does the team behind Skype have so little faith in their ability to be a meaningful independent company? Skype is one of the largest consumer networks out there. Yes, Skype may be poorly monetized today but that is less a function of some basic impossibility and more of a lack of imagination and historic constraints (Skype payments anyone?). Few companies get a shot at true global scale. Skype has it. So why pair up with someone instead of building an independent platform? As an avid user I would happily buy shares in an IPO and hold them for a long time to come.
