The Ashes
eBay Finally Accepts To Sell Skype, Deal To Become Official Today
eBay is set to announce a deal involving Skype sometime today after the company allegedly agreed with private investors to sell the VoIP service as it caused more troubles to the company rather than helping it. According to the NYT, the company will sell Skype to a venture capital firm called Andreessen Horowitz which is co-owned by Marc Andreessen, the man who co-founded Netscape and who is now part of eBay’s board of directors.
The report says that in the deal there are also involved other two private investment firms, Index Ventures (an early Skype investor) and Silver Lake Partners. Although there is no official price, it is said that eBay will sell Skype for $2 billion, and although we’re going through a recession, the VoIP service will bring $600 in revenue to eBay.
Skype was sold to eBay in 2005 for a sum around $3 billion, but soon Skype’s co-founders, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, who are also “engaged” in a suit over Skype’s peer-to-peer technology with eBay. The two co-founders are trying to convince private investors to buy back Skype for several months now, but so far they have failed.
At the moment it is unclear if the deal will go through as eBay declined to comment on these affirmations. The report is not based on actual proof, but we should trust the NYT and its “two people briefed on the company’s plans.”
via NYT.
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