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Niklas Zennstrom, CEO of Skype, and eBay are paying the price for the disastrous acquisition of the Internet telephony service two years ago. The Skype cofounder has stepped down from his CEO role, and eBay will take a $1.4 billion asset-impairment charge — more than half of the $2.5 billion they paid for the company. The silver lining? eBay only has to pay $530 million of a potential $1.7 billion earn-out to Skype investors, since Skype is performing so poorly. With the shareholder payment out of the way, eBay can more easily put Skype on the auction block. And Zennstrom can focus on Joost, his new online-video venture.