The Guardian has published “an amazing Skype Instant Messenger transcript” which seems to detail a conversation between Meg Whitman, eBay CEO, and Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom. It makes for fascinating reading.

@megwhitman: um, need to say something. You remember we paid $1.6bn for Skype and promised you up to $1.7bn in earnouts and other things for Skype shareholders based on revenues in 2008 and 2009?
@niklaszennstrom: …
@megwhitman: niklas? you there?
@niklaszennstrom: sorry, this great show just came on Joost, you know, my peer-to-peer TV thing. There’s this girl and she dives really deep while dressed up as a dolphin. She has a fin and everything.
@megwhitman: anyway, we’re cutting that to $530m
@niklaszennstrom: … now she’s swimming with dolphins!
@megwhitman: also we’ve cleared your desk.

Obviously this is tongue in cheek (to say the least) but it makes an interesting point and one that is best summed up by a quote from New York Times columnist Saul Hansell:

Here’s a suggestion to every Internet executive: take a Post-It note, write “EBay wasted $3 billion on Skype” and stick it to your monitor.

Whilst I still think that Google will end up getting its money’s worth out of YouTube, the Skype incident should be a salutary one for a lot of Web 2.0 sites. You have to wonder if Mark Zuckerberg has started regretting his decision to turn down offers for Facebook in the region of $1 billion. Whilst it has been widely reported that Microsoft are about to invest in the social networking phenomenon, you have to wonder if this will make them reconsider that move.

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