It's an end-of-the-week grab-bag. (A marketing person would refer to it as a "synopsis of important industry events." Somebody else, like my mother, might label this 'cast nothing but garden variety rumor mongering.)

In any event, Allen and Mike share their recommendations on how Google could spend the $4 billion they just raised in their secondary offering.  Allen muses on the rumors about Microsoft and AOL.  Mike muses more about the Future of Music Summit in D.C.

Pretty cool stuff, but it makes me miss "The World's Most Dangerous Places" with Robert Young Pelton. His interview with Ahmad Shah Massoud is one of TV's greatest moments. The book (which I own) is available on Amazon.

I just don’t see the match between eBay and Skype. The other players who recently jumped into the VOIP game—Yahoo!, MSN, etc..—have fully fledged consumer communications platforms which include email (with a lot of storage), Instant Messaging and voice chat. eBay has none of those vital ingredients. In addition, there is no social network platform or blogging platform upon which it can build.

Honestly, I think a company such as Myspace or Friendster is a more viable candidate to buy a VOIP company. I doubt it’s in Myspace’s future and I doubt Friendster has that kind of money. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.