eBay To Buy Skype For $2.6 Billion

eBay Inc. is buying Skype - the Internet Telephony Company in a $2.6 bn deal.
Skype, founded by the creators of Kazaa, the file-sharing program that riled the music business gives away software that allows people talk for free over the Internet using computers and microphones . A paid version, SkypeOut, allows those calls to be connected to regular phones. Similarly, SkypeIn is a real phone number your friends can call and you pick in Skype.

eBay is buying Skype to speed up the communication between the buyers and sellers instead of the current method of exchanging messages.

Skype has 53 million registered users, including more than 2 million who pay for its premium services. In 2004, Skype generated about $7 million in revenue, which it projects will snowball to $60 million this year. eBay said it would pay an additional $1.5bn to Skype over the next three years , bringing the total size of the deal to $4bn.