Skype’s main competitor in the pure-VoIP market, Vonage, recently filed for an initial public offering. The additional investment, while modest compared to the price tag of the Skype buy, may help put to rest questions about whether eBay would be able to keep Skype competitive in the rapidly evolving VoIP space. Skype has no immediate plans to change its voice processing provider from Global IP instead, it intends to enlist engineers from Camino and Sonorit to refine its own technology, which is just one of a number of specific technologies that enable voice communications on the Web. Global IP Sound is no stranger to Sonorit - having sued it last year for trade secret violations after Sonorit hired several Global IP Sound employees during its growth spurt. Currently Skype licenses voice processing technology from a third party, Global IP Sound. Skype’s interest in Camino is based on the firm’s expertise in voice processing on the Internet.Improvement in that area seen as key to the growth of VoIP and other voice services delivered over the Internet. The fact that it let Skype make and announce the deal is seen as evidence that it intends to let the firm grow on its own - an approach similar to the one it has used to establish PayPal as a dominant online transaction processing firm. The deal will have no impact on eBay’s earnings for the coming year, the auction giant said. “They will add considerable expertise to our own world-class technology team.”īeing part of Skype will give Camino Networks “access to the best platform for bringing our technology to users,” CEO Jonathan Christensen said. “We’re excited about bringing the talented Camino Networks team to Skype,” he said. Skype co-founder and CEO Niklas Zennstrom said the acquisition gives his firm access to “some of the leading experts in online voice engineering.”

It will pay the closely held startup with 700,000 shares of eBay stock, giving the deal a value of about $27 million. Skype, which eBay acquired last September in a deal worth US$2.6 billion, said it would acquire San Francisco-based Sonorit Holdings and its U.S. Peer-to-peer communications firm Skype said it would buy a pair of VoIP startups in a two-for-one deal completed with the stock of parent company eBay, a transaction that gives it direct access to technology it currently licenses from a third party.

Skype technologies subsidiaries