When eBay first surprised plenty of folks by buying Skype in 2005, the company insisted that there were plenty of synergies between the two companies — despite them being quite hard for anyone to see (and for eBay management to explain). They trotted out a couple of ideas that were easily shown to be false. All of this was finally confirmed last year when eBay wrote off much of the acquisition. Now, finally, eBay is admitting that there really are no synergies between the two, even though it apparently spent about two years trying desperately to find them. In talking about how Skype faltered after merging with eBay, Skype’s latest General Manager admits that looking for synergies between the auction business and the VoIP business are a thing of the past: "There is less focus at eBay today on finding the place where eBay and Skype intersect on the web, on using mashups to create a new communications paradigm for eBay, and more focus on Skype growing its business and eBay growing its business." Why that only cost a few billion dollars to figure that out.