Big Blog

We just put out a piece of news about our [management changes](http://about.skype.com/2006/12/skype_announces_senior_managem.html).

Such changes are a disruptive thing. I, of all people, should know. I’ve been working for three different managers throughout this year, having a lot of re-orgs, re-makes, re-everything. I can certainly think of another group of people who are somewhat put off by the change — our lovely HR team who barely finished the new organization charts from the previous changes we had these nice new charts, and the moment the charts got finished, the team learned of the news of going back and having to start over.

But this is just pebbles. The big news here is that Niklas will continue to run the company according to his vision with the rest of his original core team that started Skype more than three years ago. eBay brought some people over for a while and some senior eBayers like Henry continue to be in key positions, although acting more as advisors now instead of daily execution. I’ve had the privilege to work with many of Skype’s friends from eBay and I can say they are very fine people who understand and love Skype and want to help us succeed. But now Niklas and his team decided that they have their own ideas about how to deliver the results, building upon the past heritage and the pretty stellar track record of Skype. And eBay lets them do just that.

I haven’t really commented on this whole eBay-Skype thing myself too much, as you can have a lot of speculation around it without very little substance. I prefer to let the facts speak for themselves and today’s news is a response to the sceptics who figured that eBay will come in and do a hostile takeover and trash Skype.

There will surely be changes in 2007 about what Skype does and does not do. We have said at various times that we will do a lot of different things. Some of those will not happen, while others will happen that we haven’t yet spoken of. One thing is for sure — we will remain true to our original commitment of letting the whole world talk for free, while adding further value with our paid products.