Reports Say eBay To Sell Skype

eBay is about to sell its Internet telephony subsidiary Skype, according to teports in the US media.

The company, which bought Skype for around $3 billion in 2005, is understood to be selling the VoIP company, which never integrated well with eBay’s online auction business or its e-payments service PayPal, to a group of private investors.

These are believed to include Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm of Netscape founder Marc Andreessen. The group could also include an early investor in Skype – the UK’s Index Ventures, according to the New York Times.

After the purchase of Skype, eBay admitted that the company was worth considerably less than it paid for it. In April this year, eBay announced plans to float Skype in an IPO in 2010, and in May, eBay chief executive John Donahoe said a valuation of $2 billion would be low for Skype. This deal would apparently take the place of those plans – and probably a further re-assessment of the value of Skype.