eBay's (EBAY) purchase of Skype for over a billion dollars years ago was seen by many as obtuse and strange. Did eBay really expect its auction buyers and sellers to want to speak over the Internet (or video conference, for that matter)? Part of the allure of online auctions is the relative anonymity both sellers and buyers have. No "meeting in the parking lot" Cragislist-ish type of meetings in most cases.

But Skype has not paid off like eBay would have hoped. While the purchase of PayPal was the best acquisition eBay ever made, the planned synergies never materialized with Skype. While still a popular voice and video service around the world (ultra-cheap as well), Skype may be posed to bring voice and video calling direct to flat-panel television sets near you soon. The "videophone" concept has never really been that popular, mostly due to the kludgy ways past products have been designed and marketed.

As Doug McIntyre mentioned earlier today, eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) will soon start charging users of its Skype VoIP (Voice over IP) service $30 per year to use the service. I have expected this for quite some time, as eBay ponied up over $2 billion for the company. At some point it needs to accelerate the process of receiving a return on that investment beyond the current subscribers who pay for "SkypeIn" and "SkypeOut" Internet phone calls (an incoming telephone number and an outgoing any-number call capability, respectively).

What I am most interested here is how Skype customers will react to this situation. While everyone (I imagine) loves a free lunch, eBay shareholders are probably more interested in seeing the company's cash hoard grow even larger than it is (the company has over $3 billion in cash) and for some good to come from the Skype acquisition.

While eBay's acquisition of PayPal was a great decision and a perfect move for the time, many of us questioned why eBay would purchase a VoIP company like Skype. Are legions of its customers really using Skype to perform chats during auctions? That's hard to believe -- but maybe it's true. Yet, eBay has provided no proof.

There's nothing like a ringtone to set a girl apart from the other hangers-out at the coffee shop. Ringtone sales have been huge, says the Motley Fool's Rick Aristotle Munarriz, for companies like Infospace. But when Skype started selling ringtones, it was to a big ol' yawn from users - who really needs to set his computer ringtone apart from the other computers in his home office?

Munarriz sees a lot of potential, however, in the music download market. His belief is that Skype's 100 million-plus registered users might finally be monetized through music (and, naturally, video downloads and concert tickets), at last justifying eBay's purchase.

I have a hard time seeing this as such a huge advantage, personally - I'm a faithful Skype user, but I've never spent a penny with them. And music won't be the place where I start.

I own a few shares of eBay and zero Skype ringtones.