Looks like the doom and gloom about Skype's future is gaining more momentum. After my "Skype's Losing It" post earlier week looking at the political, regulatory and business threats to Skype, Om Malik has weighed in today with a post focused on employee defections (hat tip to Andy Abramson) and the "changing culture" at Skype now that it is no longer fast-moving rebel but a target of regulators and competitors. I sat down today with Iotum's Alec Saunders and Howard Thaw (their relevance engine looks very attractive to  revenue-starved carriers), and we agreed Skype appears to have lost its raison d'etre and momentum. Maybe eBay will get Skype back on track after the acquisition is digested but eBay doesn't have much time given Google is quickly moving into the click-per-call market. With a $4.1-billion bet on the table, eBay needs to come up with a pro-active strategy for Skype or risk having it end up as an expensive and misguided strategic mistake.

Earlier this week, I wrote a column in the Financial Post exploring the idea about whether a new rival to Google in the search market could emerge. My take is it's unlikely unless a company develops kick-ass technology and has the financial backing to build a global brand, large user base and, as important, the back-end infrastructure. An interesting angle in the search story is Dipsie, which initially wanted to go head-to-head with Google in the mainstream search market but has decided - at least for the time being - to focus on the deep search market (data hidden behind firewalls and databases). You can read my column here. SiliconBeat has some more details on Dipsie as well.