ANOTHER GOLD RUSH

The news of eBay's $2.6 billion acquisition of Skype brought a real sense of déjà vu to those of us who lived through the go-go '90s. In those days, of course, companies such as Lucent Technologies, JDS Uniphase, Cisco Systems and WorldCom were spending on acquisitions as if tomorrow would never come — unfortunately, it did. Interestingly, however, while many in the telecom industry are pooh-poohing the purchase as overspending on the hype of VoIP, many within the Internet community view this acquisition as the natural next step for one of the many Silicon Valley giants now poised to add voice communications to their e-commerce model. From this vantage point, the only logical question seems to be, where's Amazon, and why doesn't it have a VoIP play? It's hard to imagine the day when eBay is a phone company, offering voice service along with everything else. Indeed, the early emphasis in the merger is on how to use Skype to extend eBay's online auction service into places it doesn't yet reach, particularly outside the U.S. But then, five years ago, it would have been hard to imagine doing routine shopping on eBay — and it is now the first stop for many price-conscious American consumers. It may be easy to deride the amount of money being spent on Skype, whose primary service is free and whose revenues may reach $60 million this year, but as the e-commerce world finds its voice, it will be hard to fathom now how far companies such as eBay, Google, and Yahoo will go in reshaping communications.