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eBay announces new Skype chief

Elinor Mills CNET News

Published: 26 Feb 2008 11:21 GMT

eBay announced on Monday that it had appointed new chief executives to its Skype and Shopping.com properties.

At the helm of telephony company Skype will be current Shopping.com president and former Evite co-founder and chief executive Josh Silverman. Taking Silverman's place at Shopping.com will be Andre Haddad, who joined eBay in 2001 when it acquired his start-up, the European marketplace site iBazar.

This continues an extensive management shake-up at the online commerce giant, which saw the departure of long-time chief executive Meg Whitman in January.

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eBay itself has been going through some difficult times, with seller dissatisfaction over higher fees and other policy changes leading to a week-long boycott of the auction site.

Meanwhile, many questioned whether Skype was a worthwhile acquisition for eBay in the first place when the company disclosed a $1.4bn (£70m) writedown last year to handle Skype-related charges. Skype also suffered a two-day outage in the summer of 2007.

Silverman will replace interim Skype chief executive Michael van Swaaij, who was appointed to the post in October when co-founder Niklas Zennström (now at the helm of Joost) left the post amid the $1.4bn snafu.

Credit: eBay's latest buy: New CEOs for Skype, Shopping.com from CNET News