Okay, so Google may not have been able to buy Skype, but it had inked an agreement with eBay, merging the best of the two companies’ assets.

Assets in the sense that the two companies are merging the best of what they have: Ads for Google and Skype’s VoIP excellence.

Hmm. Google taking over the world eh?

So what does this merger really mean?

According to Google’s press release:

Specifically, Google will become the exclusive text-based advertising provider for eBay outside the United States. In addition, eBay and Google plan to integrate and launch “click-to-call” advertising functionality that leverage both Skype and Google Talk globally in each company’s respective shopping and search platforms. The companies said the financial terms for certain components of the deal involve revenue sharing, but did not disclose specific details.

Wow, ads for eBay and the “Click to Call” to pimp both Google Talk and Skype. Hmm.

Well, this does bode well for the website consumers on both sides of the fence: the buyer can click to call a seller, and the sell gets juiced-up sales because then he can make his pitch charismatically with the voice call functions. Not bad.

Well, it depends on how you’d really look at this event. If you’re one of the Google doomsday oracles, then yes, be very scared. Google is aggressive and it’s taking over Skype and eBay and who knows, probably the whole of VoIP-dom! Oh noes!

But if you’re one apathetic consumer, then it’s all good. More integration and more functionality for you.

Here’s Martin Geddes’ take on “Why Skype needs Google” (Subtopic: Skype and Google the Yin and Yang):

Remember how Google’s delivery of customers to vendors is almost completely unstructured. This contrasted with eBay and Amazon where the marketplace is highly structured in advance. A phone call is also highly unstructured today. Google is naturally placed to capture this high-end of the market. Leave eBay to worry about highly commoditised simple transactions; Amazon to take the mid-market where more complex transactions exist. Google is particularly suited to retail of complex, niche, high-value goods and services.

It would be interesting to compare the average eBay sale, average Amazon sale, and average Google-brokered transaction.

So the attraction of Skype to Google is time to market. Rather than waste time repeating basic communications stuff, just buy into an existing technology and user base where most of the bugs have been ironed out. Why take on the execution risk of something outside your core domain?

Money money money.

Image Credits:

Edvard Munch’s The Scream
Money Eyes

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