A consortium of investors that are being led by Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Silver Lake are submitting a plan to buy a minority stake in Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO). TPG Capital is another company that will be making a proposal for Yahoo! Both of these proposals would lead to taking a stake of around 20% of the company.

It has been confirmed that Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is acquiring Skype for $8.5 billion in cash from major shareholder Silver Lake. The Microsoft and Skype board of directors has approved of the deal. As of the end of 2010, Skype had 170 million users and accounted for 207 billion minutes of voice and video conversations.

Private equity firm Silver Lake is known for their investments in Skype and other technology companies. Now Silver Lake has invested an undisclosed amount in PrimeSense Inc. PrimeSense is the company responsible for designing some of the components that went into the Microsoft Kinect. Microsoft has shipped about 8 million Kinects thus far.

Group coupon service Groupon.com has completed its $950 million series G round of funding. The best part is the press release title: “Groupon Raises, Like, A Billion Dollars.” I’ve pasted the press release below. The investors in this round include Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, Greylock Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Mail.ru Group, Maverick Capital, Silver Lake, and Technology Crossover Ventures. Allen & Company LLC acted as financial advisor. The previous funding rounds was led by New Enterprise Associates, Accel Partners, and Mail.ru Group (formerly DST).

As you may remember, two months ago eBay was planning to spin Skype into an independent company. The buyers who would take control of Skype from eBay included Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Index Ventures, and Silver Lake. However the founders of Skype interrupted the sale by claiming intellectual property infringement on the VoIP technology. The original founders of Skype started a company called Joltid. And Joltid said that they were suing eBay.

The lawsuit has now been settled. eBay will be selling a majority ownership of Skype to the aforementioned investors for $2 billion. Joltid will be licensing the technology to the new Skype buyers. Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis will get 14% ownership in Skype as a result. Both Friis and Zennstrom will also make a “significant’ investment in Skype too. eBay will retain 30% in Skype and the rest of the investor group will get 56%.

Friis and Zennstrom also filed a lawsuit back in September against former Joost CEO Mike Volpi. Friis and Zennstrom founded Joost several years ago and sued Volpi because of breach of fiduciary duty. Volpi is currently a partner with Index Ventures which is one of the companies buying Skype. As a result, Index Ventures is no longer one of the buyers in Skype. The acquisition is expected to close by the end of this year.

At the beginning of the month, eBay announced that they would be selling Skype to several buyers. The buyers included Silver Lake, Index Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. That sale has been interrupted not by Kanye West, but by the founders of Joost and Skype.

The founders of Joost and Skype started another company called Joltid. Joltid is suing eBay on the basis that Skype is infringing on their technology at least $100,000 times per day. eBay denies the allegations. But Joltid co-founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom says that their company holds the intellectual property rights to VoIP applications including Skype. Joltid filed the lawsuit against eBay two weeks after the announcement was made that Skype would be sold to the aforementioned buyers.

Today another lawsuit was filed by the Joltid, Skype, and Joost co-founders. Zennstrom and Friis filed a lawsuit against former Joost CEO and Chairman Mike Volpi along with venture capital firm Index Ventures. The lawsuit states that there has been a breach of “fiduciary duty against Volpi, aiding and abetting breach of fiduciary duty against Index, interference with prospective business advantage, misappropriation of trade secrets, breach of contract against Index, breach of confidence, and civil conspiracy.” Volpi had recently quit Joost to join Index Ventures back in July.

Between Index being sued and wanting to buy Skype from eBay, that company is up the creek made out of you know what with no oar. I also think it is safe to say that Friis and and Zennström don’t want to see Index own the company that they built and sold to eBay. Who knows? Maybe the purchase of Skype might be too much of a headache and might the transaction may be aborted. But all the buyers involved have already come to far and won’t go down without a fight.

About four years after eBay acquired Skype for about $4.1 billion, $2.6 billion of which was upfront cash, the company has decided to sell a big chunk of it it off to several investors.  Skype was valuated at $2.75 billion when eBay decided to sell 65% worth of the company to investors such as Silver Lake, Index Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

eBay will receive about $1.9 billion cash when the deal is complete along with a $125 million note in principal from the buyers.  eBay itself will retain 35% in Skype.  The transaction is expected to be complete by the fourt quarter of this year.

“This is a great deal, unlocking both immediate and long-term value for eBay and tremendous potential for Skype,” stated eBay President and CEO John Donahoe in a press release. “We’ve acted decisively on a deal that delivers a high valuation, gives us significant cash up-front and lets us retain a meaningful minority stake with talented partners. Skype is a strong standalone business, but it does not have synergies with our e-commerce and online payments businesses. As a separate company, we believe that Skype will have the focus required to compete effectively in online voice and video communications and accelerate its growth momentum.”

Back in April, eBay said that they were planning on spinning Skype into its own brand and preparing a separate IPO for the VoIP company.  Now it is assumed these investors that took control of Skype will work together in preparing the IPO.  This gives eBay the ability to focus all of their energy on their own company and on PayPal.

How much money does Skype make?
In 2008, Skype itself made $551 million in revenue which was a 44% increase from the year before.  eBay’s total revenues for 2008 was $8.5 billion.

How many users does Skype have?
By EOY 2008, Skype had about 405 million users which was a 47% increase from the year before.