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Analsys & Opinion The Right Angle Has the Skype fallen in for eBay?
Analsys & Opinion The Right Angle Has the Skype fallen in for eBay? | Has the Skype fallen in for eBay? |
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| by Stuart Corner | |
| Saturday, 15 July 2006 | |
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In a posting on the VoiPWiki blog on 13 July Charlie Paglee claimed to have received a call on his Skype softphone from a colleague in a Chines software firm who was using a home-grown clone of the Skype software, and the caller even sent him a screen shot of something that looked not dissimilar to the Skype softphone. Paglee concluded that, if the claims proved to be correct, "This could have a terrible effect on eBay should they choose to leverage their Skype client to host advertisements. Now that there is the prospect of a competing client available there is little doubt that there will be an ad free alternative to Skype should advertisements on Skype appear in the future." Well there are a few possible responses to this. (1) eBay never envisaged such a possibility; (2) it was convinced through due diligence that this could not be done; and (3) it anticipated just such a scenario and has plans for counter-measures. With the amount of money involved, the latter seems by far the most likely. It's hard to imagine eBay not canvassing the possibility and, given the number of times that encryption for everything from cellular phones to DVD protection has been cracked, 's equally hard to believe they would gamble $US2.6 billion on Skype being the exception. A key attribute of the Skype technology is the controversial Skype Super Node: Any computer running the Skype softphone can potentially act as a node for other Skype clients. This enables Skype to scale to tens of millions of users without massive investment in central servers and connectivity. However because of this, many corporates (whose high bandwidth networks would make them prime super node candidates) ban Skype. According to Paglee, the Chinese software will not support Skype’s Super Node technology. This, he says "means that very soon Skype users will have an alternative client which will not hijack their computer. This could eventually have a very negative effect on the Skype network if too many people choose not to act as Skype Super Nodes and the network starts to deteriorate." However the Skype Super Nodes appear to be key to Skype's ability to operate behind firewalls, according to Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom, quoted on The Register in 2003 in an explanation of how Skype gets through firewalls and NAT routers. So there might be some other limitations on the Chinese software. According to Paglee the Chinese developers say their software is not stable enough to release to the public, "but they are working night and day on a demo which they hope to launch before the end of August." Then we'll see whether the sky, or at least eBay's share price falls in. {moscomment}
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