VOIP (voice over Internet protocol) is heating up bigtime: First Google announced Googletalk, and now eBay says it will pay $1.3 billion in cash and another $1.3 billion in stock (plus up to $1.5 billion pending certain performance criteria) for Skype, which claims 53 million members but, according to this article, only 1.3 million paying customers. Still, that’s more than Vonage, which that same article notes has about a million.

What I don’t know about VOIP is quite a lot, but it looks to me like Google just got a smackdown. Maybe Vonage, too. At stake in the VOIP wars? How does hundreds of billions of dollars in lifetime customer value sound? The estimated 3 million VOIP customers in 2005 is predicted to increase ninefold to 27 million by 2009. Let the games continue.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 13th, 2005 at 12:01 am and is filed under Internet Stuff.