A couple of days ago, there was a rumour that Facebook was in talks to buy Skype. We have now learned today that Microsoft have agreed to buy Skype for the princely sum of $8.5billion.  Skype was founded in 2003, and was sold to Ebay in 2006 for $2.6billion. Shortly after that, in 2009, Ebay sold a 70% stake to an investor group led by private equity company Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz for $2billion. This investor group seems to have done very well out of the deal, by almost tripling their money in less than 2 years - from $2 billion up to nearly $6billion.

Some analysts have speculated that the price Microsoft paid is way above company value considering that Skype barely turns a profit. In 2009, Skype posted a loss of £352million. In 2010, Skype made a positive profit of just $20.6million. If skype made the same profit as 2010 every year, it would take Microsoft 420 years to break even on their investment.

Obviously, having Skype in the MS family will be a big boost for the fledgling Window 7 Mobile platform, and it's unclear whether skype will remain availabe to Android users in the future.