Google’s Skype Interest Lies In Advertising

Is Google’s Rumored Interest in Skype All About Ad Dollars?

There is a lot of chatter around the industry about the Google potentially acquiring Skype, but what no one has mentioned is that this deal is really all about the ad dollars Skype could bring into Google. Many point to Google’s telco ambitions as a driver for the acquisition of Skype, but to date Google nothing that Google has done outside of search and advertising has been a hit, or even moderately successful. What Google is great at is selling ads and they should stick to it.

By acquiring Skype, Google would gain the ability to display ads on the Skype client (which gets them “on the desktop”), play audio ads before calls, and not to mention get them onto the cellular handset through Skype Mobile. Google could also make non-Skype-to-Skype calls absolutely FREE, favoring an ad-support model rather than the current pay-per-minute model. Google likes to offer free services supported by ads (after all that is what their search engine is) and telephony has long wanted a player to come and make it completely free, supported of course, by ads.

But what if you do not buy the telco angle or the advertising angle? Well, try this one on for size. How about Google buying Skype for their user data? It widely known that Google wants to know every single detail about you and your life in order to catalog it all in an index and deliver more targeted ads to you. They recently launched Open Social to “get to know you better” and have even provided funding to a company that wants to be the world’s trusted source of personal genetic information.

Buying Skype for the chance to learn more about 80 million people? That’s not so far fetched.

Call me a conspiracy theorist on this one, but I don’t buy the Google-Skype telco angle.

PamFax Skype Fax Solution Wins SkypeMashup Competition

Skype Users Now Have A New Way to Fax Documents

This year’s winner of the SkypeMashup competition is PamFax, a Skype extension that allows users to send faxes from their desktop. The extension, created by PamConsult, is the first of it’s kind for Skype.

According to Skype Journal,
“The PamConsult team created PamFax to solve the problem of providing a very simple process (especially relative to the somewhat cumbersome WinFax) of using the Internet to easily fax an MS Office document anywhere worldwide. The primary Skype feature here has nothing to do with voice; they used the Skype Extras publishing platform not only to install the application but also as a transaction processor for collecting revenues for the service using Skype credits. Skype Chat is used to send notifications re a fax’s delivery. In addition they developed a web-based portal to manage and archive your use of the service. The application can be launched from the Skype Extras menu or from within MS Excel or MS Word. A link to Google Maps will also show roughly where the fax is being sent (to within an Area Code).”

I tried to install the extension this afternoon, but I was unable to complete the installation (it was my fault). For the first time in a few months, I am excited about something related to Skype. This extension will make my day (and thousands of others) a little easier and will serve as another tool for business users.

What’s Worse Than The Skype Worm?

When Skype Employee’s Get Infected With It

I don’t really pay much mind to Skype anymore. They are not really doing much to wow and impress me anymore. So when I heard that there was a Skype worm making the rounds, I did not pay much attention to it. That is until I came face to face with it through one of Skype’s employees who happens to be on Skype user list. Talk about bad for your business, huh? While I was smart enough to not check out the “funny pictures they had of me”, I did find it more than ironic that my exposure to the Skype worm came at the hands of a Skype employee.

Skype and SalesForce.com Hook Up

Skype Continues Push Into The Business Sector

Skype and SalesForce.com announced today Skype For Salesforce, which was developed and maintained by PamConsult GmbH, a Skype Developer Program partner that specializes in developing applications for the Skype and eBay platforms.

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Skype to Allow Payments Through PayPal

Skype Users Will Be Able to Seamlessly Send Payments to Other Users

At this week’s VON Conference and Expo, Skype CEO Niklas Zennstrom annouced that Skype users will soon be able to send payments to other Skype users via PayPal. Although Zennstrom stated that Skype is working with PayPal, no exact timeframe was given on when we might see this capability within the Skype messenger.

With the recent announcement of Skype Prime, it is clearly evident that Skype is looking to drive further revenues through marketplace creation and payment processing further leveraging their massive user base. While it has taken longer than expected for eBay, PayPal, and Skype to fully integrate one another offerings, it seems of late, that there has been an increase in urgency for the companies to work together.

Even though none of the current service integrations have been spectacular, or even highly successful, I still believe at some point, there will be a “complete online business” offering coming out eBay, that includes a website, an eBay store, payment gateway and accounting system through PayPal, and business communications through Skype. If that happens, watch out.

New Trojan Horse Spreading Through Skype

Another Skype Security Threat Emerges

Yet another Trojan Horse has burrowed its way into the Skype network. According to Websense Security Labs, a new set of the Warezov/Stration malicious code has been discovered. This new code is currently spreading through the Skype network. Although the code itself is not self-propagating, which means Skype users will actually have to activate the Trojan Horse, when it runs, a URL is sent to all users within the user’s Contacts List.

This seems to be the same Skype attack I reported about, back in February

What Should I Be Looking For?

If you get a message from someone on Skype, that says “Check up this,” with a URL containing a hyperlink, DO NOT click on this. If you click on the link, you will be redirected to a site that is hosting a file named file_01.exe. You will then be prompted to run the file (note: there is no vulnerability within Skype). If you where to run the file, several other files are downloaded and run.

Once the Trojan has been installed it will sned the same message to all of your Skype contacts. So be careful, and, as always, if you do not know what it is, do not click on it!