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SAN FRANCISCO — Rather than enduring the uncertainty of spinning off the Skype telecommunications service through a public stock offering, eBay has found a different way out: It is selling 65 percent of Skype for about $2 billion to a group of private investors. EBay will keep the other 35 percent.
The deal will help eBay undo its 2005 acquisition of Skype, which puzzled analysts. Despite Skype’s strong, steady growth, it was hard to see how eBay, which specializes in running online marketplaces and facilitating Web payments, needed a service for making free or cheap calls on cellphones and computers. The Associated Press
