Wow! Skype REALLY SUCKS!

There appears to be growing dissatisfaction with eBay CEO Meg Whitman, with several analysts suggesting that she should step down.  Recent headlines include “EBAY CEO Whitman may be on her way out,” “Analyst wonder when Whitman will leave eBay,” “Should eBay CEO Meg Whitman Step Down?” and even “Interview with eBay’s John Donahoe, Possible next CEO.”  Most cite the disastrous $4.1 billion ($2.6 billion plus $1.5 billion in incentives) acquisition of Skype as an example of Meg’s lack of leadership and business sense.  At the time, eBay execs cited the “synergy,” despite the fact that the last thing eBay sellers want to do is talk with one of the millions of moronic eBay buyers.  As a registered user since 2000, I can tell you first hand that 99.9% of the time when a potential buyer contacts the seller prior to the close of the auction they are trying to either get you to sell the item early, reveal the reserve price, or are simply trolling for email addresses.  Why would I want to talk with them?  eBay even tried mailing out cheap microphones to its sellers in an attempt to generate use.

I mention this because my neighbor has an iMac and he installed Skype to videochat with other neighbors.  I thought I would do the same on my Windows Vista Ultimate machine.  After the install and restart, my computer froze several times, and was incredibly slow.  I got repeated pop-ups asking me if I wanted to allow various Skype applications to access the Internet.  After clicking ten popups, I uninstalled skype.  What a piece of shit.

I truly believe that Whitman simply rode the inevitable popularity of eBay without contributing anything.  What about the $1.5 billion Paypal acquisition in 2002, you say?  eBay only acquired them after buying Billpoint in 1999 and then failing to launch it for another year.  Billpoint was essentially dead, and eBay phased it out after the PayPal acquisition.

CNET’s Troy Wolverton wrote a detailed article about the failed Billpoint acquisition in 2002.  Some interesting quotes:

“Analysts say Billpoint failed because of a poor business plan, aggressive competition from PayPal, and hostility from eBay sellers.”

"You would have expected, given its pedigree, given that it was part of a major banking company, that Billpoint would have taken off," said Alan Alper, an analyst with research firm Gomez. "But they were slow to get out of the gate, didn't have the right name, the right connections or the right marketing plan."

To help speed adoption of its service, eBay brought in Wells Fargo as an equity investor in Billpoint in March 2000 and teamed up with credit card giant Visa to promote the service later that month.

The company also repeatedly promoted Billpoint to its customers. Last year, for instance, eBay offered to credit listing fees to customers who sold items using Billpoint. Later that year, the company encouraged buyers using its controversial Checkout feature to purchase their items using Billpoint.

All of these efforts had little effect.

Poor business moves also stunted Billpoint's growth, analysts say.

Although eBay bought Billpoint in May 1999, it was slow to launch the service to consumers; eBay didn't test it on its site until the fourth quarter of that year, and the service wasn't available to all customers until the second quarter of 2000. By that time, PayPal had already entrenched itself as the No. 1 way for online auction sellers to accept credit card payments.

Meanwhile, after purchasing Billpoint, eBay moved to focus the service on its site alone. Just months after it acquired Billpoint, for instance, eBay scuttled a deal Billpoint had with Excite@Home that allowed Excite@Home customers to accept Billpoint in the company's auctions and classified ads. Although eBay allowed sellers to use Billpoint off of eBay, the company didn't promote that usage and, in fact, made it difficult for sellers, analysts say.”

 

So last year eBay takes a writedown of $1.4 for the Skype acquisition.  Look for eBay to scuttle Skype any time now, selling it to Google or its ilk.  And the bloom fades from Meg, who was singlehandedly credited for the success of eBay despite really contributing nothing.  She seems to have lucked into her role, after a career of short term stints that lacked any real “synergy” with eBay.

Prior to eBay, from January 1997 to February 1998, she was she was General Manager of the Preschool Division of Hasbro Inc., a toy company, an interesting post given the fact she was previously CEO of FTD for less than two years from February 1995 to December 1996.  (Was she shit canned?)

From October 1992 to February 1995 she worked in various positions at Stride Rite, including president.

From May 1989 to October 1992 she was SVP Marketing for Disney Consumer Products

Prior to that she was a consultant for Bain, a job she apparently landed after filling a quota spot at Harvard Business School.

Meg likely regrets saying that she couldn’t imagine being in charge of a company for more than 10 years, but it’s time for her to go.  Just imagine what a good CEO could do with eBay.  Off the top of my head, likely improvements could include:

Making the user interface easier to use;

Improving customer service (how about a freakin’ phone number???)

Cracking down on fraud; and

Taking a proactive role in disputes between buyers and sellers.

Instead, eBay has added confusing services that no one uses, such as eBay stores, Best Offer, and eBay Express.  Good riddance meg.  Perhaps you and Carly Fiorina can start a sorority of failed CEOs.  It’ll be the ugly girl sorority though.