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Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion

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Re: Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion

#71

Post by trout »

bane wrote: post #65
trout wrote: post #32

Microsoft owns the desktop - that's their cash cow. For large businesses they (basically) have to buy outlook / exchange. They throw powerpoint, visio, word, excel on top of that, plus the operating system, and they own it. From an operating system standpoint, there's not any real threat. From a productivity suites perspective, there's a bit more threat from cloud, but it's still comparatively small. Same can be said…

I find it ridiculous that I can't find another desktop email client that will natively work with exchange/MAPI, and Microsoft knows it. http://projects.gnome.org/evolution/

Did not know this existed, but doesn't help me since I use Windows

Re: Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion

#72

Post by kenjackson »

w1ntermute wrote: post #19
mgkimsal wrote: post #13

A few thoughts: When we see the mac version stagnate, we won't be able to say MS has sabotaged it - skype did that before on their own. The linux version has never been on parity with the others - will it be officially killed? Might MS actually put resources in to it to make it work as well as the others? Overall, good on MS for doing this. I'm assuming this may bring on some more interesting dynamics to the google v…

Don't forget about the Android and iOS apps. No doubt those will be killed off as well.

Why? MS seems to be more aggressively supporting iOS than WP7. See how often the Bing app has been updated on iOS than WP7 over the past year.

The cloud is more important to MS than WP7 is.

Re: Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion

#74

Post by Duff »

dstein wrote: post #66
philwelch wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will serve the long term interests of Microsoft shareholders; sadly, Microsoft doesn't realize that.

Dividends reward short term shareholders. Capital reinvestment rewards long term shareholders (if it's successful).

10 years ago, Microsoft was $35. Today it is $25 and change. Not very rewarding.

Microsoft is like the electric utility of the technology business -- they should embrace that or wake up and break up the company into manageable parts.

Buying Skype? That's not creating shareholder value.

Re: Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion

#75

Post by lurker19 »

damncabbage wrote: post #53
william42 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used the Linux version of Skype. It's rather bare-bones.

Which is great. It does pretty much everything the Windows client does (chat, voice, video, desktop sharing), without the big, gaudy, annoying interface. I fear that it'll just go away, or actively get shut down by compatibility changes. (My friends and I practically live on Skype. The one killer feature for us is persistent chatrooms; it's like IRC, except when I log in I get all the missing chat history I didn't ge…

What version of Skype and Linux do you have that doesn't have the giant interface and a dozen windows open at once to show a dozen chats?

Re: Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion

#76

Post by aneth »

lotusleaf1987 wrote: post #60
brisance wrote: post #57

I fail to see how this is a wise business decision. Skype has been losing money for a long time, and with cheap/free competition like Google video chat and FaceTime etc, why would MSFT invest in this?

I think you answered your own question: to compete with FaceTime and Google Voice. I think they're afraid to sit this race out the way they did mobile and get left behind again.

If Microsoft somehow owned both of those services, would it affect Microsoft's prospects? Certainly not. FaceTime is a gimmick that few people actually use use. Google Voice is bridge between soon-to-be legacy voicemail and cellphones and the future, which is unlikely to be owned by either Google or Microsoft. Neither business would help Microsoft grow again, and neither will Skype.

Re: Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion

#77

Post by bane »

trout wrote: post #71
bane wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it ridiculous that I can't find another desktop email client that will natively work with exchange/MAPI, and Microsoft knows it. http://projects.gnome.org/evolution/

Did not know this existed, but doesn't help me since I use Windows

Yeah, alternatives I've seen in Windows all require Outlook to be installed anyways (what's the point?).

Re: Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion

#78

Post by johns »

firebones wrote: post #68
neworbit wrote: post #56

MS would do a lot better to buy 200 promising startups (especially in the mobile space)

I get the sentiment, but do you really think a) that there are 200 worthwhile startups in the mobile space, or b) that there are 200 promising startups that you could acquire for an average of $350 million each that would have anywhere near the chance of establishing a network effect as big as Skype's in any kind of reasonable internet timeframe (say, in the next 5 years)?

35 million each, not 350

Re: Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion

#79

Post by Rariel »

The only way I can think of for them to really, really make this worth it beyond just owning the service is to integrate it in to Outlook like gmail video/voice chat. Although worker bees would hate it, it would be cool as a supervisor to be able to "call" your employee from a program you already have open all day anyways. Or even co-workers working on a project too lazy to get up or lawyers who need to talk about something but don't really have time to stop what they're doing. They could implement a feature enabling you to "add" friends who use outlook to your chat/buddy list. I don't think it would kill off gmail, but it would make some people much less likely to try it.

On a more personal note, I really hope they don't take away all those cool chat thingys (refuse to call them emoticons). That dancing guy and disappearing pizza get me every time.

Re: Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion

#80

Post by lurker19 »

daimyoyo wrote: post #46
teyc wrote: post #24

There is always a persistent threat of Apple bringing Facetime to the PC desktop so that people on iPhones could call people with PC. By purchasing Skype, MS could bring Skype to WP7 and offer it preloaded. There used to be a time when MS could get traction simply by bundling their product everywhere. A competitor like Skype would be abandoned simply because they couldn't outspend MS. Imagine, $7b is a lot of money.…

That's already happened. When Apple introduced Lion, one of the things they mentioned was they'd ported FaceTime to the Mac. You get it preloaded with a new Mac, or it's $0.99 in the Mac app store.

Mac is not a PC. Apple will hesitate a long while before bringing Facetime to the PC, because Facetime promotes all-important lock-in to the Apple ecosystem and sells Apple hardware.
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