Microsoft at Work on Meshing Its Products With Skype - NYTimes.com

Excerpt from a Microsoft + Skype reality check

"Beloved for its cheap and free Internet calls, Skype’s use has continued to grow briskly, jumping 40 percent to 100 billion minutes of calls in the first three months of this year from the same period last year.
Still, Mr. Bates and other Microsoft executives cannot afford for Skype to be too independent. They want to avoid repeating what happened after Skype was acquired by the auction site eBay for $2.6 billion in 2005. The audience for Skype soared after that deal too. But when expected synergies with eBay did not materialize, eBay spun off Skype into a separate company with new investors."

Microsoft at Work on Meshing Its Products With Skype - NYTimes.com