Skype has finally been sold off from beleaguered auction house eBay, though they will retain a 30 percent stake in the company.

Email is currently one of the key elements of the Internet. And sending and receiving email is usually one of the first things we learn to do when going online for the first time. But its life could be coming to an end with new research predicting the demise of email within a decade. Its killers? Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and instant messaging apps such as Skype and MSN Live Messenger.

Over the weekend Mozilla Labs launched the prototype of a new Web-based messaging inbox called Raindrop that helps sift through all of your messages to make sure you don’t miss important ones. More importantly Raindrop collects your email, Twitter and Skype messages into one clean inbox called the Inflow.

Mozilla, the people that brought you Firefox, are now aiming to serve all your Web communications needs by combining email, social media, and more in a single unified software interface.

Bosses of some of the Internet’s best-known Web sites have called for the Federal Communications Commission to stick to its plans to enforce net neutrality principles. It follows lobbying by 72 Democrat congressmen asking the FCC to go easy on the policy.

Indian intelligence agencies are recommending to the government of the country that popular VoIP service should be blocked in the country due to its reluctance to cooperate with them.

At this point the Apple Tablet has to be one of the most confirmed, unconfirmed products in the history of Apple. And the latest round of rumors just keeps adding fuel to the fire that this device is indeed real.

Even in the midst of lawsuits from Skype’s original founders regarding the use of its technology, EBay CEO John Donahoe is hell-bent on jettisoning the unit. This turbulence comes just as EBay’s long-term outlook is starting to look up.

Joost board chairman and previous company CEO Mike Volpi has been removed from the Joost board by shareholder vote and his actions while CEO and chairman are being investigated.

It seems that the selling 65 percent of Skype won’t stop eBay from launching shares of common stock for the service next year.

The news started leaking days ago, but now it’s official: eBay has sold Skype to a group of investors.

Both companies may be household names and among the Internet elite, however the marriage between eBay and Skype seems to have hit upon irreconcilable differences.

It seems venture capitalists smell blood in the water when it comes to Skype, and now they are pooling their resources to go in for the kill.

Despite an apparent distaste for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) applications on the popular Apple iPhone, this isn’t stopping companies such as Vonage from trying to get one released through the App Store.

It would seem that eBay made a rather large mistake when it purchased Skype back in September 2005, as in that it forgot to make sure it had all of the rights to the core technology that powered the service.

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TechCrunch, one of the leading technology and social media blogs in the world, is about to enter a whole new industry with the launch of its CrunchPad table computer.