After reading some of Andy Abramson's recent posts on Skype, as well as my own views on Skype's sudden loss of mojo, I've come to the conclusion eBay got suckered badly on the deal by Tim Draper and Niklas Zennstrom. No matter how you want to slice and dice Skype's strategic value to eBay or Skype's value as a disruptive, stand-alone telecom player, there is simply no way it was worth $2.6-billion or $4.1-billion. Even more troubling is Skype's apparent inertia as gradually morphs into an eBay subsidiary. Unlike Paypal, which was a solid technology and business play, a big part of Skype's "value" was its James Dean-like rebellious approach to the telecom market that resonated with geeks and, increasingly, non-geeks. I don't think this attitude works within a multi-billion dollar company such as eBay. It is becoming obvious eBay faces a huge challenge capitalizing on Skype's technology and user-base. If eBay fails to execute properly, the Skype deal could easily blow up as an expensive strategic blundedr. That said, even if eBay does execute, Skype is still going to go down as an vastly over-priced deal where the only winners are Zennstrom, Draper and Skype's other investors.