Skype, like most VOIP companies, is a tax arbitrage play.

The idea is that you avoid the tax costs of telephony by running your voice calls over an Internet connection. As everyone gets broadband, telephone service dies a natural death.

But neither the Bells, nor the governments they feed, are willing to go away quietly. I've written often about how it's done here. But it's done everywhere.

The same day eBay announced it would buy Skype, China started cracking down harder on Skype, and its Internet-Phone version SkypeOut. Unlike the situation with, say, Falun Gong, this is an effort where telephone firms are, not reluctant, but eager co-conspirators.

Thus, Infoworld reports, customers who persist in using SkypeOut for long distance are having their Internet service cut-off, and Skype itself is insisting it doesn't sell SkypeOut in China.

The struggle for VOIP is a political struggle, as much as it is a technological one. And eBay is vulnerable to pressure on that front, in ways that Skype by itself was not.

This talk of "synergies" is starting to smell a lot like AOL-Time Warner to me. The more I hear it, the more it stinks. (Especially when you hear the good news that continues to come out of Paypal.)