HP is in search of direction these days. After buying Palm for $1.2 billion, HP produced the TouchPad tablet but, in the face of poor sales, disappointed customers, and tepid reviews, killed the product within a few weeks. They managed to sell a ton of them with a $99 fire sale, and, at the same time, decided to ditch CEO Leo Apotheker.

But before Apotheker was shown the door, he also announced that HP was looking to spin off or sell their popular PC division, because of slim profits. Don’t forget that, by volume, HP is the number one PC maker on the planet, at least for this year. If they can’t make it work who can?

Well, in the rush to find a replacement, HP’s board chose one of their own, Meg Whitman, famous for being President and CEO of eBay from 1998 to 2008. During that time, although she stewarded the growth of eBay into an online auction powerhouse, she also green lit the acquisition of PayPal and Skype. The former decision has had debatable results from a customer standpoint; the latter proved a disaster. These days, Skype is a division of Microsoft.

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This article was posted on Monday, December 12th, 2011 at 12:00 AM and is filed under News and tagged with: computing, Ebay, Hewlett Packard, Leo Apotheker, Meg Whitman, Microsoft, PayPal, PC., Skype.