Skype Still Out; eBay Down $1 billion

Skype is still down in much of the world -- including my home office! -- and it's costing eBay big-time. The stock of Skype's parent is down $1 billion in market value since the problem started.

The strange part is that it remains largely a mystery WHY the outage has occurred. Skype is saying little. Theories range from a bug that had been dormant inside the Skype client software to a crash caused by Skype's system getting overwhelmed by the number of users. Whatever the cause, right now this is looking like a big black eye for Skype and eBay.

Skype's official explanation on its Web site:

Apologies for the delay, but we can now update you on the Skype sign-on issue. As we continue to work hard at resolving the problem, we wanted to dispel some of the concerns that you may have. The Skype system has not crashed or been victim of a cyber attack. We love our customers too much to let that happen. This problem occurred because of a deficiency in an algorithm within Skype networking software. This controls the interaction between the user's own Skype client and the rest of the Skype network.

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