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Race Hots up to Purchase Skype

Posted 10th May 2011 by Daniel     Email article      Share article

It’s looking more and more likely that Skype will be sold in the coming days. Sources close to the company state that Microsoft are closing in on a deal thought to be in the region of $8.5billion for the VoIP based software application.

This comes day after Facebook were seemingly in pole position to acquire the company but their bid of $3-4billion seemingly wasn’t good enough.

So why the sudden interest in acquiring Skype? As we all know it’s a fantastic service and any company who purchases it will undoubtedly reap the benefits of adding the software to their system. Perhaps Microsoft have panicked and decided they need to act seeing as Facebook had big plans for Skype and with Windows Messenger having nothing close to the audience they had in times gone by it makes sense to try and get back in the game.

Facebook’s chat service still leaves a lot to be desired and considering their position as the biggest social media website in the world, they will undoubtedly be looking at ways to further their service and remain at the top for years to come.

Would Skype be right to sell? Well $8.5billion is an incredible amount of money but at the moment it must be considered that they don’t really have a major competitor with Google’s Voice still restricted to the USA and not given a significant push as of yet. Some have said Microsoft are willing to pay too much for a company that hasn’t turned a huge amount of profit to date. If as reported the deal goes through it will be a huge statement by Microsoft but whether it pays off or not will take time to assess.

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