A long list of senior management changes has been announced today at eBay and its properties PayPal and Skype. The market for all but its services except online auctions has changed so much recently it will be interesting to see what policy and services changes follow.
PayPal President Jeff Jordan will be replaced by eBay’s former CFO and head of strategy and now Skype President Rajiv Dutta. Skype’s VP of Products Alex Kazim will take Dutta’s place as President of Skype. Henry Gomez, currently General Manager of Skype North America, will take on a new position of Chief Marketing Officer and Director of Country Operations Worldwide for Skype. Lorrie Norrington, formerly President and CEO of eBay owned Shopping.com is now President of eBay International. Matt Bannick leaves that position to lead eBay’s corporate philanthropy and developing world work.
To summarize:
1. PayPal President replaced by Skype President/former eBay CFO+strategy.
2. Skype VP of Products now President of Skype.
3. Skype North America GM becomes Chief Marketing Officer for Skype Worldwide.
4. Shopping.com head becomes eBay international President, last President takes over philanthropy.
Meanwhile…eBay banned Google Purchases for payments on auctions today. This spring eBay banned third party reputation system RapLeaf. The much anticipated Skype integration into eBay just a few weeks ago turned out to be very unexciting. Is an an increasinlgy walled garden the future of eBay/PayPal and Skype? eBay stocks took a dive today on the announcement; such a strategy could really backfire.
There appears to be little analysis of any of this yet from the various Skype and eBay communities online. Is the former strategist of acquisition-monster eBay taking over PayPal to get aggressive now that Google is in the payment game? Is the VP of Products at Skype taking over Skype because new products are what Skype has really done right? Is the Google search/adsense/purchases powerhouse such a threat that eBay’s auctions/payments/VOIP strategizing needs a major upgrade? When (if) Google announces a Google OS will we see shifts like this at Microsoft? Oh, questions abound.