Leader: eBay - don't squash Skype

Of all the potential buyers for Skype that have circulated in recent weeks - including Google and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp - eBay was the one that left the most observers scratching their heads.

And yet today it was the online auctioneer that stepped forward and put its cash on the table, offering an impressive $2.6bn for the voice over IP company.

The reason for the head-scratching? Though eBay has expanded its business into e-payments, classifieds listings and community sites, it's still best known for its online auctions. Sure, VoIP could be a nice addition to that service, allowing buyers and sellers to haggle online about the price of goods. But that capability alone hardly seems worth billions.

eBay is saying Skype is for more than just online auctions, that it will open up new ecommerce revenue streams and increase exposure in parts of the world such as Japan where the VoIP company has taken hold but the auctioneer has not.

The real kicker will be whether eBay will be able to keep alive the brand and community that's grown up around Skype, one of the very reasons it was able to command such a high price.

This feat has proved difficult in the past. Most recently, think of the fuss Flickr users put up after new parent Yahoo! said it would take over the photo site's accounts. And remember how Hotmail withered after Microsoft took over?

What makes the Skypes, the Flickrs, the Hotmails so popular is a certain combination of good product, community, style - a certain je ne sais quois that touches a nerve running through the net, that fulfils a need while also creating a need to be part of the 'next big thing'.

One could argue eBay was one of these phenomena back in the day. But it's grown up and now is clearly the staid parent in this partnership.

It doesn't have to turn out badly, of course. eBay appears to have done a good job bringing PayPal - its last mega acquisition - into the fold. The trick is to eke out all that multibillion-dollar value while not squashing the Skype-iness out of Skype.

We'll see.