Ebay's Sale of Skype Finalized, Founders get 14% Stake

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Ebay's sale of Skype has been finalized.  Skype will be sold to a consortium formed by Silver Lake Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.  The consortium will buy 56% of Skype, with the original founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis getting 14%.  The remaining 30% will be retained by Ebay, who receives approximately $1.9 billion in cash upon completion of the deal.

The sale of Skype comes as a great relief to all parties involved.  Current Skype customers won't have to worry about changes to their Skype services or fear any kind of shut down.  Ebay gets back most of the $2.6 billion that they paid for Skype back in 2006. 

Originally, the Ebay-Skype alliance was praised by many people who thought that Skype's unique VOIP technology would be of great benefit to Ebay's users.  However, the alliance never quite materialized like many had thought and Ebay users didn't gravitate towards Skype. 

Ebay's ownership of Skype was significantly hampered by its lack of ownership in the Joltid company, which owns the software that makes Skype's VOIP technology possible.  Skype's founders, Zennstrom and Friis retained full control of Joltid when Ebay bought Skype back in 2006. 

Voltid had filed a lawsuit against Ebay earlier this year for infringement of their proprietary rights to their VOIP software.  The lawsuit has since been dropped, as Voltid will be sold to Skype as part of this complex new agreement.