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Canada Pension Plan one of Skype buyers
EBay has reached an agreement to sell a 65 percent stake in its Skype Internet telephony, video conferencing and instant messaging unit for $1.9 billion in cash to an investor group led by Silver Lake. In addition, eBay will receive a note in the principal amount of $125 million from the buyers, which also include Index Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. The deal, which isn’t subject to financing conditions and is expected to close in this year’s fourth quarter, puts Skype’s value at $2.75 billion. In April, eBay announced its intention to spin off Skype, saying the Internet telephony unit didn’t mesh with eBay’s two core businesses: its e-commerce marketplace and its PayPal online payment division.
Android Market underperforming, says developer
The Android Market probably produces less than US$5 million a month, despite a recent report that issued that estimate, one successful application developer says. On Monday, games developer Larva revealed its sales figures for its Android apps and complained that Google needs to make some changes to help developers improve their prospects. It suspects that the Android Market probably produces far less than $5 million per month, as estimated by the AdMob report. That same report estimated that the iPhone application store generates $200 million a month, the veracity of which also has been the subject of much developer debate. Larva Labs joins a chorus of developers, many of whom have been long clamoring for changes in the way the Android Market works in hopes of earning more from their applications.
Microsoft readies IIS server patch
One day after a security researcher published attack code for a flaw in Microsoft’s IIS server software, Microsoft said it plans to patch the issue. Microsoft also released a security advisory describing the problem and detailing technical workarounds that system administrators can implement while they’re waiting for a patch. Microsoft’s next set of security patches is due Sept. 8. It’s not clear if the company will be able to develop and test its IIS (Internet Information Services) patch in time for that update, however.
Gmail outage affects businesses
Google’s Gmail e-mail service was down for most of its users worldwide for almost two hours, affecting not only individuals who use it for personal matters but also organizations and their employees who depend on it as their business e-mail system. Google acknowledged that Gmail had a widespread, worldwide collapse shortly before 4 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time on Tuesday and declared the outage resolved at close to 5:40 p.m., according to information posted on the Google Apps Status Dashboard. In that dashboard, Google offers performance and availability information about the online services included in its Apps collaboration and communication suite, such as Gmail, Calendar, Talk, Docs and Sites.