Can eBay and Google turn on the Internet phone calls?

I think eBay made a great move teaming up with Google. People want to communicate with each other. If I am buying a big ticket item on eBay it helps if I can call that person or company directly, or they can call me back. Big companies will have people standing by to answer the phone or phones. (They are in the process of hiring phone consultants as I write)

It is much easier to do business that way and possibly avoid many mistakes. EBay and Google will do great things together from now on. Skype will play a huge role down the road. eBay is no longer a little Ma-and Pa operation out of a garage. Millions of big companies will sell on eBay. And they will appreciate the phone service to communicate with their customers.

A different form of communicating vs. chit-chat, from a software-technology point, Skype-Google technology interoperability alliance is design for instant P to P by click to call using Skype VOIP bundle into Google toolbar.
Let’s say Hyatt Hotels ads display on a banner on a Google ad, using Skype that consumer can utilize the instance link for further completing their query, rather than having to manual dial the number. This is one brilliant aspect for Skype in from of telecommunicating at a low cost to the consumer-merchants.
Skype is differ from most VOIP company today, in part of its superior capabilities to bundle with entities like Google & Yahoo portals.
This new way on telecommunicating is not a form of replacing the traditional land line phone system, rather a cost effective way via the internet migration.

I question how successful eBay will be at monetizing a proprietary, closed VOIP system in the face of competition from cable MSO's that are starting to aggressively promote bundled TV/internet/phone packages to their customers.

eBay has an impediment with skype that the cable companies don't share. Unlike Time-Warner or Comcast or Cablevision, skype runs on peer-to-peer system architecture that relies on the bandwidth of its customers in order to work. The more bandwidth you have, the more of your bandwidth it wants to use.

That's why corporations want nothing to do with skype, and ban their employees from installing it on work PC's. It's to protect their high-speed servers from being usurped to act as relays for skype's phone traffic.

Home PC's can suddenly slow to a crawl when skype taps into their CPU's to borrow their processing power, yet I'd venture to say that the vast majority of skype customers have no idea that skype piggybacks on their systems to connect calls.

What happens if a significant number of users decline to allow their PC's to be used to relay calls, or simply decide that they don't want a VOIP service that degrades their system performance?

The tech press has been on to this issue for months: http://tinyurl.com/d7eqn

And in other less than glowing news, eBay is already being criticized for neglecting the skype developer community, which doesn't exactly bode well for product innovation.
http://tinyurl.com/jft66

This just about sums things up:

Why Ebay Will Die:
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=34077

How embarrassing for eBay. The state university in its own hometown plans to ban skype to keep it far away from its servers.

It will be interesting to see whether eBay is able to convince them that it's a good idea to allow skype to tap into their processing power.

(As a CA resident whose taxes help support the state university system, where do I cast my vote for "Oh, hell, no!")

http://tinyurl.com/qlovh