Skype Crack Spells Bad News For eBay

Reports say that the Skype client has been reverse engineered, and that a compatible client using the cracked code will be released some time in August. If true, this is very bad news for eBay, because it'll make it much tougher for the company to make back its multi-billion dollar Skype investment. The Jan in Malaysia blog claims that a company in China has done the reverse engineering, and the company plans to release a Skype-compatible client, with features such as presence and instant messaging.

It's unclear whether eBay will take action against the company if it releases a client. But if the client is released, eBay has to face some hard decisions. One way the company may make money on Skype is to deliver ads into it, in much the same way ads are delivered to AOL Instant Messenger.

But given a choice between a client with ads, and one without ads, plenty of people will choose the one without ads.

Here's another problem for eBay: The cracked client apparently will not support supernodes. Instead, they'll piggyback onto Skype users' supernodes.

Again, given a choice between a client that may act as a supernode, and one that may not act as one, which one do you think most people will choose? Who wants to be a supernode, considering all it does is use bandwidth?This could ultimately lead to serious problems on the Skype network. If there aren't enough supernodes, the quality of calls and service will degrade.

This is just one more problem eBay faces with its Skype acquisition. My bet is that people in the eBay boardroom aren't particularly happy right now.