Why did Skype leave a bad taste in eBay’s mouth?

eBay purchased Skype for $2.6 billion back in 2005 with the intent of integrating the service into the eBay auction site.  A perfect harmony of buyers and sellers asking each other questions about items for sale via voice.  But the idea never took off and for several reasons.  eBay never really had a full plan outlined on the project.  It was a great expensive(and I cannot emphasize anymore on this) idea to integrate the two services.  But if there’s no planning involved for the project to move forward how can such an idea be executed in the first place.  If you go to eBay’s website, look through the pages, the auctions, the buyer and seller profiles, you don’t see a way to contact these users via Skype communications.  Same thing on Skype.com, no sign of eBay’s ownership or service integration.  You can send Paypal payments to Skype contacts but what good is that?  If you could chat via voice and/or video with buyers and sellers it could give each person more confidence with bidding or completing a sale.

I think eBay has the resources to still pull this off, especially with Skype’s current member count of 309 million users.  Also, how many eBay commercials have you seen?  A lot, even during Superbowl’s.  Now how many Skype commercials have you seen?  None.  eBay treats Skype like the red headed step child that it is.  But there is so much more potential behind the service that’s untapped.  eBay may seem more willing to just let Skype go and not even bother.  Especially with the recent talks of selling the service.  As Ars Technica says in this article, Google may be the best company to purchase Skype.  They definitely have the resources and the new Android cellphone platform to push it to consumers.