Microsoft's announcement back in May that it was spending $8.5 billion to acquire the Internet phone company Skype was considered by many to be a bit of a game changer for Microsoft.

In the past the company had not spent that much money in terms of buying other companies or technologies. Now, a major venture capital investor and a co-founder of one of the companies that previously owned Skype before Microsoft's deal claims that Microsoft "stole" Skype in terms of paying a lot less than perhaps what the company is worth.

CNBC.com reports that Roger McNamee, the founder of venture capital firm Elevation Partners, said of the Microsoft deal, "They bought the last global, integrated telecom company left for half the value of Sprint." He added, "There should be a war crimes trial about that deal." eBay previously bought Skype but then sold it off to Silver Lake Partners in 2009 for $2 billion.

At the time of Microsoft's Skype purchase announcement back in May, Microsoft said that it planned to integrate Skype with a number of Microsoft's product including the Xbox 360 console, its Kinect motion controller camera, the Windows Phone operating system and more. Since the announcement Skype launched a deal with the social networking service Facebook to offer video chat features. Microsoft has said that it will continue to support Skype for a wide variety of platforms. While the US's Federal Trade Commission has approved of the Microsoft-Skype merger it is still awaiting approval from European nations. Microsoft hopes the purchase of Skype will be final by October.

http://www.neowin.net/news/investor-says-microsoft-stole-skype-from-ebay

Posted: Jul 28, 2011 1:44 pm