It looks to me like Metcalfe's law is striking again with the recent announcements that eBay and Google are looking at combining
Skype and Google Talk or
something along those lines. The obvious reasons for this - namely a single standard click-to-talk interface and, potentially, a single login for both services - are good but I don't think they address the whole advantage.
One problem that Skype has found is that it is hitting some scalability limits - at Nice Ventures we are observing these ourselves - which are ably explained in this recent Cringely column. It seems to me that one way for Skype to solve some of its scalability problems is to get someone with a lot of servers in a well distributed network to run Skype super nodes, and if there is one thing that google has a lot of it is servers distributed around the world.
This is actually a win-win. For click-to-talk to produce revenue Google (and eBay) have to get it to be completely reliable and to allow calls out to the PSTN. This needs lots of supernodes in convenient locations as well as numerous links to the PSTN. Google has one, Skype/eBay has the other and both understand the web and the benefits of a proprietary open standard. By combining interests the network of potential users expands and there is no need to duplicate resources. It also of course benefits consumers since we consumers no longer need both a google and skype client for our various connectivities. In fact about the only losers are the telcos, so we can perhaps expect some spoilsport at Verizon or AT&T to call down the FCC or some other regulator on them for monopolistic acts.
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