After paying $US 3.1B for Skype in 2005, eBay recently wrote down the value by around $900M, recognising that the wisdom of the investment was in question.  Estimates of the current sale at $US 2B seem to fit with this revised valuation.

eBay had recently announced plans for an IPO to spin off Skype, although this is often considered to be a ploy to flush out potential private equity buyers – successfully in this case.

The only fly in the ointment is the potential fallout from the legal action being heard in the United Kingdom between eBay and Joltid, inventors and still owners of much of the underlying peer-to-peer technology.