Executives at eBay (EBAY) have made plain that Skype wasn't long for their stable of businesses. What was less clear is how the e-commerce giant would dispose of the division that lets users place free or cheap phone calls over the Internet.

The suspense ended on Apr. 14 when eBay said it would separate Skype through an initial share offering, selling stock to the public in the first half of 2010.

Or maybe the suspense has just begun. On its face, the announcement represents a sensible way to unlock the value of a company that's growing rapidly, but has never lived up to the expectations outlined by eBay executives, who shelled out $2.6 billion for Skype in 2005 and later paid an additional $500 million in bonuses.

Skype sales surged 44%, to $551 million, last year and the company expects them to top $1 billion in 2011. The user base surged 47%, to 405 million, in 2008. "As an independent company, [management] could take it to a new level," says Nitzan Shaer, a former Skype executive who is now a managing director at High Start Group, which consults and invests in tech startups. "Is this a Google-level IPO? Maybe."

An IPO Awakening? At the same time, the IPO announcement may also turn out to be an early negotiating tactic in what could become a high-stakes tug-of-war over the company's fate. Skype co-founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis recently negotiated with eBay and several private equity firms to buy Skype back, according to an Apr. 11 report in The New York Times. Analysts have speculated that Skype could also find itself in the crosshairs of a host of companies, including Microsoft (MSFT), Google (GOOG), and social network Facebook. "Without a competing bid, it's hard to negotiate a price," Shaer says. "By saying they've got an IPO, they've just created another bidder for the company." Alan Marks, an eBay spokesman, says the company plans to proceed with the IPO, and that eBay "is not soliciting bids," though it would consider any bids that arise.

In the end, a share offering might turn out to be the best way to return value to investors, analysts say. "The Skype founders had tried to get the company for discounted value, whereas public investors may overpay," says IPO analyst Tom Taulli. Zennstrom and Friis reportedly offered less than $2 billion for Skype. An IPO could fetch $3 billion to $5 billion, Taulli says, assuming that the IPO market recovers as expected later this year. "IPOs will start coming back," he says. One promising sign: Shares of Chinese online gaming site Changyou.com (CYOU) have climbed nearly 70% since the company's Apr. 2 initial offering.