Ebay announced a formal agreement to acquire Skype International SA for roughly $2.6 billion in cash and stock, according to MarketWatch.com. Rumors of this deal were widely discussed last Thursday, after an article about the possibility appeared in The Wall Street Journal.

EBay suggested several synergistic effects that may occur as a result of Skype's integration with the company:

• "Skype can increase the velocity of a trade..., especially in categories that require more involved communications such as used cars, business and industrial equipment, and high end collectibles."
• Paid Skype services such as SkypeOut could quickly be extended to support PayPal.

A webcast detailing the acquisition will take place on September 12 at 8:00am. More information about the webcast can be found at http://investor.ebay.com/event.cfm.

Update: Meg Whitman from EBay is emphasizing the synergies between Skype and PayPal in the conference call. There's an additional earn out provision based on aggressive Skype growth goals. Rajiv Dutta said that EBay could pay up to an additional $1.5 billion if Skype meets growth and revenue targets through 2008.

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