eBay has agreed to acquire Skype Technologies for $2.6 billion in cash and stock. Not bad for a company that the founders of Kazaa, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, founded just 3 years ago.

With 54 million members in 225 countries, Skype already has one of the fastest growing website memberships around, but this is sure to strengthen their position as an internet communications leader. Skype lets you make free calls over the Internet. It’s free to download and you can add on voicemail for a weenie fee. You can also instant message (both text and voice) your friends, send files and make really cheap calls to land-based telephones all over the world.

One of the great benefits to Skype is the ability to have a local phone number in New York City, for instance, and receive the phone call live on your laptop while you are on vacation in Hawaii. This SkypeIn service has a small monthly fee, but no per-minute charges. It comes with free voicemail for those calls you can’t (or don’t want to) catch. I love it and could not imagine being without the connectivity Skype affords me or having to pay the phone bills I would otherwise incur.

- ethan

Tags: Skype, eBay, VoIP