eBay Set To Sell Skype
Posted September 1st, 2009 by simon
Back in October 2005 eBay raised a few eyebrows by paying out $2.6 billion to buy Skype, the internet phone company. Skype is a clever idea and it allows people to make calls across the internet to other Skype users for free. Users can also make cut price calls to mobiles and land lines but the overwhelming majority of Skype’s estimated 405 million users only engage in free user to user calls. There was speculation at the time that eBay had paid over the odds for Skype and sure enough they look set to make a loss on the deal.
Apparently eBay have been trying to offload the company for a while and stated that it had “limited synergies” with their service which makes you wonder why they bought it in the first place. It looks like Skype will be sold to a group of private investors including Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen and some private equity firms. The price is unknown but according to the New York Times eBay have been looking for $2 billion.
