Meg Whitman spoke with Chronicle reporters and editors about eBay's recent turbulence, the hot-button issue of online fraud and her plans for Skype.

Great interview with the CEO of Ebay, Meg Whitman in the    Full Article here. I highlighted the parts that have to do with Skype. Here they are.

Q: Skype, the Internet calling service that eBay acquired last year for $2.6 billion, is the talk of the tech industry. What was the thinking behind that acquisition? A lot of people are still scratching their heads.

A: We saw how fast this property was growing. Skype today is adding in excess of 300,000 new users a day.

This is one of the fastest-growing Web properties ever. People are just flocking to Skype. We saw that, we saw the opportunity to really change how communications take place.

Q: The obvious synergy is that if you want to buy something on eBay, you click on the Skype button and you get the seller on the line. But at that point, can't the buyer and seller cut their own deal, leaving eBay out of the transaction?

A: We think in some ways that communication can be to the marketplace what payments was the marketplace. What PayPal did was it accelerated the velocity of trade in the marketplace.

To the extent that you're thinking about buying a car on eBay or a high average sales price item -- the ability to talk to that seller makes you more likely to purchase that product.

Our belief is that most people are basically good and that you actually will close that transaction online. There's protection to you by closing that transaction online. But if it actually increases the velocity of trade on eBay or off, then our users are better off and we will ultimately be better off.

Q: What makes you think that you can beat Comcast and AT&T in the Internet phone business. They're much bigger companies.

A: Skype has a remarkably rich functionality that is incredibly simple to use. There's many competitors in Internet calling, not only the telecom competitors, but little startups. But in the last year, Skype has actually extended its lead in this space.