Microsoft announced today that it has agreed to buy the Internet telephone service Skype $8.5 billion which is the largest deal in the 36 year history of the country.  According to the news report:

Buying Skype gives Microsoft access to a user base of about 170 million people who log in to Skype every month, using the Internet and Skype usernames as a complement to the traditional phone network and its phone numbers.  Microsoft said it will marry Skype’s functions to its Xbox game console, Outlook email program and Windows smartphones. All of these platforms already have other options for Internet calling, but the addition of Skype users would expand their reach, making them more useful.

Microsoft can well afford to buy Skype: On March 31, it had a cash hoard of $50.2 billion.  Microsoft would be Skype’s second large-company owner. EBay bought Skype for $2.6 billion in 2005, but its attempt to unite the phone service with its online shopping bazaar never worked out. It wound up selling a 70 percent stake in Skype to a group of investors led by private equity firms Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz for $2 billion 18 months ago.

So for you gamers, we said all this to say the X-box is about to get cooler.  That is all.

Tagged as: Internet, Microsoft, Skype, XBox