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? S...

So I took today off to go to a water park with the kids (Mountain Creek, not far from NYC and based on today’s visit highly recommended). Apparently, eBay’s management was also out today, because the company decided to sell Skype to a syndicate of investors led by Silver Lake and including Index Ventures (the original Skype backers) and Andreessen Horowitz (Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz’s fairly newly minted fund). Come again? I bought a bunch of eBay shares at $14 earlier this year becaus...

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? S...

So I took today off to go to a water park with the kids (Mountain Creek, not far from NYC and based on today’s visit highly recommended). Apparently, eBay’s management was also out today, because the company decided to sell Skype to a syndicate of investors led by Silver Lake and including Index Ventures (the original Skype backers) and Andreessen Horowitz (Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz’s fairly newly minted fund). Come again? I bought a bunch of eBay shares at $14 earlier this year becaus...