Microsoft is buying Skype for $8.5B
Among rumors of a Facebook bidding war comes a move that will no doubt light a new flame under every Microsoft flamer; Microsoft has announced that it is closing a deal to buy Skype for $8.5B cash. Yup, that's $8,500,000,000! If you're like me and moved away from Microsoft Live Messenger and adopted amazing tools like Trillian in it's place, this will no doubt keep your interest peaked at seeing what becomes of Skype in the future and how it gets integrated into the Microsoft product portfolio (read, Windows Phone 7) along with the future of Facebook (Microsoft invested $240M in Facebook). Who knows, maybe they'll even just let Skype be themselves... but I doubt it. I am also predicting that Microsoft will slap either a "live" or "cloud" label onto it as soon as humanly possible!