Mark, EBay has not made a mistake, but it has taken a bold move that will require excellent execution to pay-back the investment, and make lots of money in the long term. I would say Skype should have 100 million users in 12 months time. The real money of VOIP is not in free calls to another computer, but in cheap long distance calls to regular phones! So assume 20% of Skype's future user base does call long distance. Assume a minimum $5 expenditure per month, per user, that gives you $60 a year for long distance per user. So we get: 20 million users x $60 annualy = 1.2 billion! So in 5 years they should get their investment back, at least in cash form. Add to that the selling of "voice content" and "added ebay services" and you see a huge market in its infancy. One big caveat remains though, executing this value added strategy has to be nearly flawless in the coming years, because VOIP will be a fiercely competitve market. In 10 years time, probably VOIP will dissapear, it will be embedded in the network! So Ebay has to run with this if it wants any rewards, or it will be too late! Regards, Jose Luis jlhurtado at gmail dot com.