Microsoft's Skype Deal By The Numbers

Microsoft confirmed Tuesday morning that it would be buying VoIP giant Skype in a deal that is the biggest in Microsoft's history.

Here's a look at the deal, by the numbers:

$8.5 billion: Price Microsoft is paying in cash for Skype

$6 billion: Price Microsoft paid for purchase of aQuantive, its next biggest deal, in 2007

$45 billion: Price Microsoft offered for the purchase of Yahoo in 2008

$860 million: Skype’s 2010 revenue

$7 million: Skype's loss in 2010

$2.55 billion: Approximate amount eBay takes home after Microsoft buy--for 30 percent stake in Skype it owned

600 million: Number of registered Skype users

170 million: Number of "connected" Skype users

207 billion: Minutes of voice and video conversations on Skype in 2010

Read more about Microsoft's Skype acquisition here.

Comments

[Dag Hainc]

07:14 PM on 05/11/2011

It's very mysterious to me what could be Microsoft's reason to do this. I look's to me like Skype's name in VOIP world and number of current users, that Skype attracted and messenger could not, were the main thing. Skype is very popular among the common people. I now many people and families that bot computer and got internet connection just so that they could use Skype. Technology (protocol and system architecture) is not something Microsoft could handle by it's own at least it's not the reason to give 8.5 B $. If it's technology maybe IPv6 poor development pushed MS towards to IPv4 NAT traversal solutions . But there were companies that had better performances in their product than Skype like HOLEST NAT traversal system which could open NAT and make direct p2p connections where Skype used relay servers. . So it very unclear to me why Microsoft did this .?.?.?...

[I Make Stuff]

03:12 PM on 05/10/2011

Wow, I wish I could run a company that loses money and then sell it for 8 billion.

[SFGiantsfan]

12:48 PM on 05/10/2011

Skype is an overseas company. MSFT is using overseas cash for the transaction. Since President Obama won't allow a tax holiday to repatriate that money (35% tax to bring it back to US), they bought a foreign company.

I bet people would like to see that money circulating in the US economy.

[Bushido08]

12:32 PM on 05/10/2011

Just another great app that Microsoft will ruin! How sad.

[mherrera]

12:07 PM on 05/10/2011

Okay so maybe I'm not a visionary but paying that much for an entity that regularly loses tons of money is crazy. Meg Whitman paid a crazy sum for Skype based on her idea of "buy anything at any price then figure out what to do with it." At least MS seems to have a sketchy plan for Skype. Maybe they can even improve the quality and reliability. But as they did with Yahoo advertising, look for them to shut out other platforms and anything other than IE for access. It's been such a winner for them at MS AdCenter. :)