Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said the Skype deal shows Microsoft's "super ambitious" and "irrepressible" nature and discussed how the service will stitch together the television, the PC and the mobile phone.

It has also given what Microsoft long yearned for: a brand that, like Google, is also a verb.

"The Skype brand has become a verb, nearly synonmious with voice and video communication," Ballmer said.

The Microsoft CEO and Skype CEO Tony Bates spoke at a San Francisco news conference this morning to announce Microsoft is buying Internet phone company Skype for $8.5 billion.

Ballmer said the deal will bring together Microsoft's customers' consumer and business lives on the television, mobile phone and the PC. "We’re committed to optimizing Skype for TV and Xbox, for phone and Windows Phone and for the PC," he said on the news conference, which was broadcast on the Web. "At the same time, we want to extend the reach of Skype by connecting Skype users with users of our Outlook product, our Lync enterprise unified communication product, Xbox Live and other opportunities like Messenger and Hotmail."

"Communications is changing rapidly and there are plenty of opportunities ahead. ... We’ll move beyond email and text to rich experiences in the future. ... Talking to friends and colleagues around the world will be as seamless as talking to them in kitchen or a conference room. ... We dream about experiences that are not limited by distance or device," Ballmer said in the news conference. "Whether on the PC, slate or TV," he said, "Microsoft will define this future and what it really looks like."

Skype is a popular Web phone service for making cheap or free voice and video calls on PCs and other Internet-connected devices, such as smartphones and televisions. The company, based in Luxembourg, has 170 million users, and the numbers are growing rapidly, he said, with 600,000 new registrations daily, Ballmer said during the news conference. At peak periods, the network handles 30 million users online.

Ballmer said Skype customers will not see any immediate changes. "We’re committed to the Skype user base, today and into the future," he said. "We want to continue to build and engage that base."

Bates says Skype sits at the intersection of three key trends: social, mobile and video. The company had been focused on making an initial public offering when Microsoft made an unsolicited offer.

"We’re also part of a very exclusive club. We’re in the 100-100 club," Bates said. "We have over 100 million users, but we have very engaged user base; our user on average uses us 100 minutes per month."

Ballmer and Bates will be meeting with Skype employees in Palo Alto, Calif., on Tuesday, then going to Europe to meet with employees there. Skype is based in Luxembourg.

Microsoft will need to get regulatory approval but expects the deal to close by the end of 2012.

Ballmer hopes to one day attend parent teacher conferences at Lakeside, the private school one of his sons attends, via Skype. "I broke my back trying sitting in traffic to get to a meeting at my kid’s school," he said. "I got there and wondered why I couldn’t participate electronically."

I live tweeted during the news conference and you can check out my updates from earlier @sharonpianchan.

Here is our full story on Microsoft's acquisition of Skype Tuesday.

Weigh in on our poll: "Is Microsoft paying too much for Skype?"

Come back at noon Tuesday for a Seattle Times live chat about the Skype acquisition. Here is where you can submit your question for the live chat.