There's been a lot of discussion around the Net since Ebay acquired Skype recently. In a recent monthly newsletter from Mercator Capital an oft spoken sentiment was repeated - "Both the number and variety of announcements, launches, partnerships, and investments beg the question as to where Skype is going and what this means for the IP communications sector."

Many of us have wondered about where Skype is headed and what the real directive is. Ebay and Skype are very differently run companies, and Skype has come out with an ongoing flurry of partners, plans and new fronts. Every now and then, some of us wonder if Skype isn't growing to implosion by trying to do too much too quickly. The question is whether Skype is trying to move in too many directions. At CES, seven new products were announced including WiFi phones, USB phones, cordless phones and the like. Skype also announced and arrangement with Kodak that left many of us scratching our heads.

Skype's partnering with companies like Netgear and D-Link have good synergy with their traditional target market. Relationships with companies like Vtech and Panasonic show their understanding that the telephone really is the interface that mom and pop users are comfortable with. Radio Shack as a channel partner might make good sense, although the practicality of that seems somewhat limited. I've looked in more than one Radio Shack myself and there isn't much Skype Hype going on in the stores by most accounts.

Skype has held a leader's role, but recently Vonage has catapulted back into the limelight. Time Warner and Vonage are apparently signing millions of new customers for their paid service. The alternative options for home users are growing. The question is whether Skype can expand services (really extend profitability) and show the kind of return a parent like Ebay is goingi to require?

One of the perceived problems with Skype (more than perceived in my view) is the fact that it's built on a proprietary protocol rather than something standards-based like SIP. This has presented a huge negative for many users, corporate users among the lot. Skyoe built a popular, high-quality VoIP service based on the peer-to-peer legacy of the company's founders. Proprietary protocols and peer-to-peer technologies are things that corporate networking organizations don't often like. Proprietary protocols are closed standards that limit extensibility and options. Peer-to-peer technologies have too often led to security breaches.

Skype might counter some objections by opening APIs and encouraging third parties to build on their successes. They haven't really embraced that approach so far.

Is Skype the company we hate to love? Or love to hate? Or are we all just riding the crest to see where they go? I used Skype on multiple PCs and my Treo. I use it under more than one OS. We're gearing up to bring a new feature to the Realtime VoIP Community using Skype as one input tool. I can't help but wonder about sustainability of a proprietary approach in an open source world. I think they're going to have to engage completely new partnerships and push into third party support via APIs in order to jump into the competitive profits that Ebay execs will demand.

What do you think? How do you use Skype yourself?