OK so I know this is not cell phone news – but this does impact us in the mobile world. Skype is to be bought out by Microsoft. This news comes after rumors yesterday of Skype taking offers. The total cost of the Skype buyout is $8.5 billion dollars. This includes $686 million of debt, eBay originally acquired the business for $2.6 billion in cash and stock back in 2005, because of this eBay gets $2.55 billion for its remaining 30% stake in Skype. This just means eBay finally made money on the deal from years ago. Skype co-founder Niklas ZennstrM  and Janus Friss get about $1.19 billion for their 14% stake in the company.

Now we here at PPCGeeks will let the speculating begin – but what exactly does Microsoft do with Skype? Do we see voIP for Windows Phone 7, or even a Kinect/Skype mash up? Is there something big planned that Microsoft has in store for future Windows Phones, or even possible Windows itself? Time will only tell but I do hope that they bring Skype voIP to native support in Windows Phone 7. I know there is a Skype app that will be released after Mango later this year, but imagine NATIVE support! One big question that concerns me and I think it does for others is “How badly will Microsoft foul up the acquisition with their unique bureaucratic charming personality? Let us know your thoughts PPCGeeks – and remember sometimes these things drive ideas for companies!

Source: DSLreports.com

As most of you probably know, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer did a Keynote Address today at MWC11 (Mobile World Congress 2011). There were a few things discussed, including the progress of Windows Phone 7 (WP7) and the updates coming later this year. He noted that 9 out of 10 WP7 users would recommend the phones to others and say its one of the easiest smartphone platforms out there. For most of us that have had the chance to play with the phones, it seems to take a week or more for the OS to grow on us, and we agree that its pretty easy to use and intuitive, but that also takes away from the modding community, at least for now.

Ballmer confirmed that the first update will be coming in March and it will include copy/paste and overall performance upgrades, which we all knew about already. It sounds like that’s about all this update will include.

As for the bigger update coming later this year, there were 3 major points he hit on. The first one is Internet Explorer 9, which will bring hardware acceleration and HTML5 support. The second one is Skydrive Integration, which hopefully means being able to access Office docs from your phone. The other big one is multitasking, which we all knew was coming as well. He also mentioned Twitter integration into the People Hub in a later update, probably similar to what Facebook does.

Another interesting feature that was demoed was Kinect integration, which would turn your phone into a Kinect companion. See the video below: