Despite an offer that KKR, Warburg, Providence, Elevation Partners, and the original founders of Skype proposed, eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) decided to keep the VoIP company they acquired for $2.6 billion about four years ago.  Instead eBay will spin off Skype as its own company in 2010 and will file it to go public.

“Skype is a great stand-alone business with strong fundamentals and accelerating momentum,” stated eBay President and CEO, John Donahoe. “But it’s clear that Skype has limited synergies with eBay and PayPal. We believe operating Skype as a stand-alone publicly traded company is the best path for maximizing its potential. This will give Skype the focus and resources required to continue its growth and effectively compete in online voice and video communications. In addition, separating Skype will allow eBay to focus entirely on our two core growth engines—e-commerce and online payments—and deliver long-term value to our stockholders.”

Below are some of Skype’s stats:
- 2008 revenue: $551 million, 2007 revenue: roughly $382 million
- Number of Skype users: 405 million by the end of 2008
- 2011 expected revenue: $1 billion
- Josh Silverman will now be the head of Skype.

Recently Skype created an iPhone application and millions of people were downloading it as soon as it came out.  Over 1 million people downloaded it within the first 36 hours.

[via eBay press release]

Before April 1st, the media went on to announce that on April 1st, the Conficker worm would begin to spread.  It is took the form of a 6 month old Windows bug and about out of every 5 computers lack the ability to patch the virus.  The name of the vulnerability is MS08-067.

“The whole thing about April 1 was a good thing,” stated Qualys’ CTO Wolfgang Kandek. “Before [April 1], the number of machines still vulnerable to MS08-067 was probably comparable to other Microsoft vulnerabilities. Now it’s better than average.”  The number of vulnerable PCs were about 40% before April 1, now it is 20%.

Earlier this week, the University of Utah announced that they were infected by the virus and had to shut down the campus Internet in order to isolate it.

[via ComputerWorld]

Capgemini and IBM have both announced a restructuring of their consulting divisions today.  Capgemini is merging their consulting division into a unit called Capgemini Consulting.  Capgemini Consulting will be led by Pierre Yves-Cros.  IBM created a new organization called the IBM Business Analytics and Optimization Services.

The new IBM unit will include a team of about 200 researchers that has specialization in math and analytics in IBM research.  Capgemini’s Consulting division will place about 4,000 of the company’s 90,000 staff members into the newly formed division.

“When times are tough, clients change the way they operate. A lot of decisions would be taken at regional or national level in normal times,” he said, but now those decisions to seek outside help are being taken at a global level. “It’s important for Capgemini not to get in on the tail end of the decision-making process,” stated Cros.

[via PCWorld]

CinemaView is the first company to announce that they have built monitors that will be the first to support Apple’s Mini Display Port.  This new video-connection will be the standard in Apple’s latest Mac computers.

The sizes that CinemaView is selling the Mini Display-compatible monitors are 19″ with a 1440×900 resolution, 20.1″ with 1650×1050 resolution, and 24″ with 1920×1080 resolution.  The prices of the monitors will be $300, $400, and $500 respectively.  This is a good price for anyone that is not willing to drop $900 on Apple’s 24″ LED display.  CinemaView will be unleashing the monitors before September 1st of this year.

[via SlashGear]

According to a study by Credit Suisse, Google is spending about $2 million per day to run YouTube.  That comes out to cost about $753 million per year.  Google bought YouTube a couple of years ago for $1.65 billion and had to deal with all the litigation that came with it.

Between the storage, bandwidth, content acquisition, revenue sharing, and other overhead costs, it adds up to about $2,064,054 a day according to InternetEvolution.com.  YouTube’s actual revenue is not available but financial estimates believe it to be around $90 – $240 million.  Based on all of this financial data, YouTube still has a long way to go in order to actually make a profit.

[via InternetEvolution.com]

Park Dae-sung, a South Korean blogger was arrested for falsely reporting that the country of South Korea had banned banks from purchasing U.S. currency.  South Korean authorities will find out what his sentence will be on April 20, but there is a recomendation to an 18 month incarceration.

In the blogging community, Dae-sung is known as “Minerva.”  South Korea recently implemented a three strikes law targeting online copyright violations.  Anyone that repeats copyright violations online will have their Internet access cut off.

Major movie studios in America are also trying to push countries to implement three-strike laws for anyone that infringe on their copyrighted content.

Dae-sung had predicted the collapse of Lehman Brothers which helped him garner a lot of attention to his blog.

[via Wired]

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) subsidiary YouTube and Universal Music Group are planning to launch a music video website together in order to increase both of their revenues.  The Universal Music channel on YouTube is already one of the most subscribed to on the video website.  The combined website will be called Vevo.

This deal is a major boost for YouTube because the video website is getting pressured to find additional revenue streams and is taking a lot of flack for not being able to pay fees for the rights to use their music and music videos.

Vevo will be wholly owned by Universal and it will feature higher quality videos than what is seen on YouTube itself. “The rationale is to help make Vevo a place that brands feel more comfortable,” stated Rio Caraeff, EVP of Universal’s eLabs division.

Universal hopes that Vevo will be comparable to Hulu.  Vevo will syndicate videos through their platform called Vevo Music Network.  Universal is planning to partner with EMI and Sony Music Group who have already renewed their contracts with YouTube.  Partnering with Warner Music Group will be slightly more challenging because they have not been able to make a deal with YouTube in the past.

eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) sellers will see a new option coming in mid-June. The sellers on eBay will be able to charge multiple prices for similar products that they have under one listing. For example, a seller will be able to charge different prices for the same shirt in different sizes.

Another feature being added to eBay is called “Smart FAQ.” This feature will automatically connect information from listings and connect it to frequently asked questions. For example, if a buyer has a question about international shipping, the seller won’t have to answer it because it will be connected to the Smart FAQ.

Lastly disputes between buyers and sellers will be arbitrated by eBay going forward rather than PayPal.