Andy Abramson had his own take today on Google's raising of $4+ billion (a non-trivial amount, as pointed out by Cody Willard in his note today - more than10% of GM's and Ford's combined market caps). I would have to agree with Andy - the proceeds of this sale are not for Skype (or Sk-hype, as Om affectionately refers to the company). Google's management is astute and too pragmatic for that. But then, Andy makes a whole plethora of telco plays (including a softphone SIP client, buying RIM or a directory service play). Some folks (like John Markoff from the NY Times) suggest that Google will continue to make small R&D-focused acquisitions such as Android (click here for an interesting insight on that transaction, including a battle with Microsoft for being the leading software agent in the wireless search segment of China's mobile phone market).
Which gets us back to what will GOOG do with the money? Well, I still think that for M&A's of small companies (or even slightly bigger ones), cash is certainly not needed (instead the stock can be used as currency), or it if is, it certainly will not be anywhere near the vicinity of $4b billion.
So I dare speculate that it could very well be a telco play. But one that involves deployment of infrastructure. And which infrastructure? Wireless! Broadband wireless, be it WiFi, WiMax, or even proprietary. There is a big opportunity for the emergence of a third competitor that could offer triple play services in the US (not a telco, and not an MSO). If such a player comes up with a good, basic wireless service (one that is "good enough" will do), eventually complements it with an MVNO to offer voice, video and data and then prices it below the current oligopolistic equilibrium price between ILECs and MSOs, that will create some real competition and a major threat to the incumbents.
How much would it cost to set up such a nationwide network? For Wi-Fi, we have already some parameters (the City of Philadelphia Wi-Fi project will cost an estimated $10 million). For WiMax, the time horizon is much larger, so I really do not believe that the offering equity should have been now, unless Google management wanted to crystallize some of its winnings right now to build a considerable kitty of cash.
But hey, maybe this is too far down the road. Google is raising this money here and now, and so it could very well be that it could be to create its own IMMM (Instant Multi-Media Messaging) client application (allowing the sharing of video and audio files via video/audio streaming, IM, etc.).