June 20th, 2006
With Yahoo! Messenger with Voice plug-in eBay is embracing Skype competitor
Yahoo! Messenger with Voice 8.0 was released last night. I’ve been trying this product, and have it open now. Lots of cool plug-ins. You can even add sound effects to your conversations.
But there is something else in this rev that made me go "hmm."
As I show you above, you can use the Yahoo! Messenger with Voice utility to track your eBay auctions from within the 8.0 interface.
This isn’t the same thing as a Yahoo! search that lands on the eBay home page. We are talking about something that gets you right to the auctions you want to track.
Now lessee again- what is the name of the company eBay bought for $2.6 billion?
Yea, Skype! That’s it! The same Skype that has just added "SkypeMe" functionality to eBay auctions.
The same Skype that competes with Yahoo! Messenger for IM and voice.
So if I am Skype, I am wondering why my corporate parent is striking up deals like this with my direct competitor.
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
