Yikes!

That was my reaction to yet another senseless acquisition in the software sector - eBay's acquisition of Skype. The excuse - improved ability for buyers and sellers to communicate with each other. The verdict - tell me another.

A natural buyer for Skype would have been one of the cable companies - News Corp, Comcast or Cablevision, to compete with the Bells.

This continues a string of major software buyouts recently that are hard to comprehend. Veritas buyout by Symantec is still hurting the latter's shareholders. I think this one definitely will have to be undone at some stage, with a likely spinoff of Veritas down the road! If you are willing to wait, probably for 2-3 years for that to happen, you should buy Symantec shares now, since they will definitely appreciate when this blunder is corrected.

Sun's buyout of Storagetek also falls in the same category though for a slightly different reason. Sun's entry into storage was the right move, but it could have picked much better targets, at a lower price too.