Wasn’t so long ago that everybody was penciling in a Google acquisition of Skype. Industry observer Robert Dutt noted recently that a Reuters article expressed the common pre-acquisition wisdom on Skype (News - Alert), when Facebook and Google were the two suitors in the picture, before Microsoft threw its wallet in the ring.

How’s that for a mixed metaphor? Don’t analyze it too closely, folks, sometimes a mixed metaphor is just a mixed metaphor.

As Dutt said, they were competing for “a joint venture with consumer voice-over IP (VoIP) giant Skype. While the promise of reaching Facebook's (News - Alert) millions of users must be compelling to Skype, a tie-up with Google could bear real fruit for both organizations, especially in the small business world.”

Yeah, well, then that $8 billion or so Microsoft thing happened and threw everybody back to Square One. As of this writing it’s not known who wins Skype’s hand, but it sure is fun to watch the fur fly. At last report, Microsoft (News - Alert) was “near to clinching a deal to buy Internet telephony pioneer Skype for $7-8 billion,” according to the Wall Street Journal, which noted “the deal could close as soon as Tuesday or fall apart completely.”

Google (News - Alert) already has a strong online business suite with Google Docs for Business and Gmail, as Dutt noted, writing that “but as it finds itself up against Microsoft's hosted collaboration and communications tools, its own offerings, Google Talk and Google Voice, fall short of the kind of tools available with Lync.” And then to have The Best Little Software Company in Redmond swoop in on the object of Google’s desire with a dozen roses like that... well.

And in Facebook’s corner -- folks, we really don’t mean to blend so much marriage and boxing imagery, honestly, it’s purely a coincidence -- Facebook has a worldwide user base of 500 million-plus, as Dutt notes, “and a partnership there could increase the amount of calls flowing across the Skype network. If Skype ultimately decides that its future does not involve going public as a separate entity, becoming the captive audio and video calling service for Facebook's massive user base may make a lot of sense.”

Of course by the time you read this Skype’s new owner might already be known. In which case, that’s the one we were sure was going to clinch the deal all along.