EBay Is Said to Be in Talks to Buy Internet Phone Company - New York Times

EBay Is Said to Be in Talks to Buy Internet Phone Company - New York Times "Shares of eBay fell 3.8 percent, or $1.53, to close at $38.93, as investors questioned whether eBay was abandoning its core business and worried that it might overpay for Skype. In addition to a price tag that may be higher than $2 billion, people close to the talks said eBay might also pay more than $1 billion in additional incentives to Skype management.
...
For a company that is just over two years old, Skype has already amassed a large global following - it says its telephony software has been downloaded 162 million times and it has 53 million registered users, with as many as three million using its service at any one time.
An acquisition of Skype would be eBay's biggest purchase since it bought the Internet Auction Company of South Korea in 2004 for $4.3 billion. EBay has been aggressively acquiring companies, many of them overseas, as it reaches beyond its core online auction business."