It does make you wonder about eBay's M&A team if they buy a company for $2.6Bn but still have to license the key bit of technology from the people they bought it from, AND with a license that the other side didn't have to renew.

Should at least make for an interesting lawsuit and a nice pay day for some lawyers!

How do you pay so much for a company and end up having to pay more for the technology. I don't even know why they paid so much for skype in the first place. Yes, the technology is cool, but not $2.6Bn cool. Even if they did have to license the engine it should have been perpetual with a buyout option. Then, again eBay must have been drunk off all the monies they are making screwing over users with insane fees.

good riddance, maybe their users will jump to Google Talk or other standards-based services.

This should serve as a cautionary tale to any company who relies on licensing proprietary technology in spite of emergent open standards.

eBay announced it is planning to IPO Skype next year. I guess this is somehow related.

When eBay agreed to license (not buy) the key piece of technology, I wonder why the license wasn't made irrevocable.