Ebay will sell off Skype and leave Merchant Tools to third party developers

[img_assist|nid=8165|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=100|height=42] Chief executive of Skype Inc., Josh Silverman, has initiated media reports about the company’s possible sell off.

Previously, in April Ebay Chief Executive, John Donahoe, had been quoted by the Financial Times as saying that Skype might be sold off at the end of this year in case if it fails to support the company’s key e-commerce business.

"If the synergies are strong, we'll keep it in our portfolio. If not, we'll reassess it," Donahoe said.

EBay purchased Skype for $3.1 billion hoping that it would make communications between buyers and sellers easier, however last year it wrote down its business value by $1.4 billion after it became clear that earlier expectations would not be met.

At a press conference in Seoul devoted to OECD Ministerial Meeting on the Internet economy Silverman said that Skype is a great company and Ebay has been tremendously supportive.

"In many public forums, as well as in many private forums, John (Donahoe) said he's extremely supportive of me and Skype," Silverman said.

Moreover recently eBay has announced its willingness to open their merchant tools to third party developers.

Developers are expected to write applications for their online marketplace. Although eBay is yet not sure whether they will be charged for promotion of their services on the network, the company would feature these third party applications within Selling Manager which is used by 700,000 of its merchants.

eBay said in a statement: “We’re taking our open platform to the next level”.

Max Mancini, eBay’s senior director of mobile platform and disruptive innovation, said: “One of the biggest requests from developers is how we can help them to promote and distribute their applications to sellers.”