More M&A: Should Skype buy ICQ from AOL?

What would Skype pay to add 42 million active users in 2010? The $300 million AOL seems to be asking for ICQ may be steep. According to AOL, 1.1 billion messages are sent and received in the five hours per day the average 13-29 year old ICQ user is connected. ICQ is bigger than Skype in Germany, Russia, Ukraine, and Israel.

On the other hand, Skype added 40.3 million new users in 2009q3. Ninety days of growth and an established community would be nice.

Maybe. You could lose half the ICQ users at first switch.

ICQ's proven centralized services were appealing when Skype was desperately seeking alternatives to Joltid's p2p technology. That compelling interest is over.

Techcrunch says South Africa's Naspers (JNB:NPN), a big investor in China's Tencent, expressed interest. Tencent's QQ was inspired by ICQ.

I'm sure AOL values ICQ based on its advertising revenue. Skype is unlikely to

It might be cheaper to hire the Israeli Mirabilis team directly.

tags: skype, aol, aim, icq, is, israel, mirabilis, tencent, naspers, china, russia

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