In a meaty article by the International Tribune Herald, it examines the trials and tribulations of Skype since its acquisition by EBay, and it doesn’t look all that pretty. Sure, its just released its 3.0 version of its free software which has gotten some buzz in the blogosphere, but it looks like when you look underneath the hood there are some troubling issues: a dissonance in the culture of Ebay vs. Skype; corporate business slow to take up because of security and control issues allegedly solved, and the lack of investor confidence (Ebay’s stock price has fallen 15% over the same time period the S&P has fallen only 5%).

With plenty of competitors coming out of the woodwork and Skype projected to make a profit only late in 2007, I think the question the article poses is a legitimate one — is Skype in danger of being the Netscape of VOIP?

“Skype may prove that you can be the first to innovate a piece of software but the last to find a way to make money from it,” said Geddes, the chief analyst at STL Partners, a London research firm specializing in Internet telephone industry.

* Dr. Tony Hung also blogs at DeepJiveInterests.comÂ