eBay Inc., the world’s largest Internet auctioneer, will take a charge of more than $1.4 billion related to its Skype Internet telephone division and said the unit’s co-founder quit.

EBay, acknowledging that Skype hasn’t performed as expected since acquiring it for $2.6 billion in October 2005, said in a statement today that it will write down the value of Skype by $900 million in the third quarter.

Some analysts criticized the company for paying too much for the then-unprofitable Luxembourg-based startup, which allows people to make calls over the Internet. EBay Chief Executive Officer Meg Whitman sought the purchase to improve communications and quicken transactions on the auction site. Skype’s second-quarter revenue was $90 million, 4.9 percent of EBay’s total.

“It has not performed as well as we would have hoped in the short term,” EBay spokesman Hani Durzy said in an interview. Skype was profitable the first half of the year, he said.

Niklas Zennstrom, who co-founded Skype in 2003, stepped down and will become executive chairman of the unit’s board, San Jose, California-based EBay said. Michael van Swaaij, EBay’s lead strategy officer, was named Skype’s interim chief.

EBay said it paid 375 million euros ($533 million) to settle obligations with certain Skype shareholders. The agreement, made when EBay bought Skype, called for payments of as much as $1.7 billion to shareholders based on user, revenue and gross profit goals.

Skype had more than 196 million registered users through July.

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Posted: 10|1|07 at 5:09 pm. Filed under: eBay Auctions.