Today, many a virtual business can only run thanks to Skype's ability to bypass the expensive phone networks. Here at RWW, we use Skype extensively throughout the day, and while other products like Gizmo might offer a similar feature set, nobody else ever got the market penetration that Skype got thanks to its early start.

EBay

But besides all the technical innovation, Skype's biggest news day came in September 2005, when it was acquired by eBay for a staggering $2.6 billion dollars. It doesn't seem as if anybody ever really understood why eBay decided to buy Skype and go ahead with this deal - or why they ever offered this much money in the first place. eBay never integrated Skype into the rest of its business and it was never quite clear how they would do that anyway, besides giving potential buyers an option to connect with sellers through it. In recent months, rumors have flared up repeatedly that eBay was trying to sell off Skype.

Skype 4

The user interface of Skype 4, which is publicly available, but still in beta, is a radical departure from the previous versions and hasn't exactly received many accolades for its new design yet. Skype is trying to put more emphasis on 'conversations,' but in doing so, the company has abandoned the typical horizontal IM layout for one large window with your contacts list and conversations all in one. This tends to take up a lot of space, though you can pop out chat or call windows.

Overall, we are not big fans of the direction Skype is going in with this new version, but given that it is still in beta, hopefully some of the UI weirdnesses will have been addressed by the time it launches. In order to focus its business more, Skype also just announced that it will disable Skypecasts, Skype's ability to broadcast to a large group of listeners, effective September 1st.

For the next five years, Skype's Josh Silverman says that he wants to see Skype move towards 'liquid communication,' where neither device nor place matters.

Indeed, the demand for telecommuting is on the rise as a result of rising energy costs. While not all jobs can be done from home, one study found that if every worker in the United States who could telecommute -- 53% of white collar workers -- did so twice per week, 9.7 billion gallons of gas and $38.2 billion would be saved annually. Another recent study found that 37% of IT workers in the US would be willing to take a 10% pay cut if telecommuting were offered as an option -- 22% would take a pay cut to work form home in the UK. A bill requiring federal workers in the US who are eligible to work from home be allowed to at least 20% of the time recently passed in the House of Representatives and a similar bill is making its way through the Senate.

So how does that help the web? More home workers, means a larger market for applications designed to help remote workers collaborate. Things like Google Docs, Basecamp, Dimdim, and PalBee will all benefit from a larger contingent of home workers.

Do you work from home? Would you be willing to take a pay cut if you were given that option? Do you agree with Cerf, will the high cost of oil will force more people to work via the web rather than face to face? Let us know in the comments below.