We suspected it wouldn't be too long after former eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) CEO Meg Whitman
declared her run as a Republican for California governor that opponents would attack her business record. And an obvious target is eBay's acquisition of Internet telephony company Skype, a deal struck during Whitman's reign and one that never gelled for eBay (The Deal Pipeline subscribers can read the latest about eBay's deal to sell Skype
here).
Steve Poizner, the California Insurance commissioner who is also campaigning on a Republican ticket for the governorship, recently took aim at Whitman for the $2.6 billion Skype deal. In a radio interview
picked up by Om Malik at GigaOM, Whitman defended the deal, noting that eBay will get "almost all the money back" that it spent on Skype.
A politician's dodge if ever we've heard one. As Malik points out, "We all know she blew it."
- Olaf de Senerpont Domis
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