"That makes the deal valued at roughly 12 times 2006 expected revenue of $200 million, taking out the milestone payments. And with 54 million members in 225 countries and territories, eBay is also paying about $48 per Skype user. "It is a ridiculous price. But the value must be there for [eBay]," said Principal Analyst Kevin Mitchell with Infonetics Research, a data networking and telecom market research and consulting firm. Skype had become a hot property over the last several months, with News Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. said to have been interested in acquiring it."

"Obviously that's a steep price to pay to accomplish what building your own instant messaging client will do. My thoughts are that eBay has just acquired incredible reach. Some say that there's less than 1% overlap between Skype's current 54 million subscribers and eBay's user-base.

Of course it is also possible that eBay may choose to become a major telecommunications company at some point. Although to me, this seems like the least sensible possibility because of regulatory conditions, customer service requirements, and competition, this possibility was certainly factored into the price which was estimated at $1000 per user. An astute comparison did note that recently Rim, the makers of the popular Blackberry traded at a multiple of $4000 per user, so although the valuation does seem high initially, there is at least a basis in reality for the numbers."