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Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion

online.wsj.com

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Re: Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion

#81

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion

#84

Post by rglover »

I have no real qualms with a Microsoft buy-out, but I was really hoping for Facebook to get on this one. However, this sort of leads me to believe FB is working on something they may consider "better." Let's just hope the MS crew does something intelligent with this move and we don't have another Delicious-style implosion.

Re: Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion

#85

Post by steevdave »

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

Evolution runs on Windows too. SUSE build system builds it almost daily. Just google for evolution win32 Email and you should find it

Re: Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion

#86

Post by gabbo »

LarryA wrote: post #63
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…

Here's what will happen: After acquisition, MS will put out a lot of PR saying that cross-platform is "very important" in this new acquisition, they will even release an updated version on cross-platform. ...of course that update will be screwed up as it has been "fixed" to make all versions more "windows friendly" at the expense of features that may be better on other platforms (i.e. scrap the Mac interface, kill op…

Open protocols? Does Skype use any? I'm genuinely curious, I thought it was completely proprietary.

Re: Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion

#87

Post by jsz0 »

This is Microsoft's ICQ moment. Overpaying for a company at the moment when its core competency is becoming a commodity. Does anyone have the slightest bit of loyalty to Skype? Of course not. They're going to use whichever video chat comes built into their SmartPhone, tablet, computer, etc. They're going to use FaceBook's eventual video chat service or something Google offers. No one is going to actively seek out Skype when so many alternatives exist and are deeply integrated into the products/services they already use. Certainly no one is going to buy a Microsoft product simply because it has Skype integration. Who cares if it's FaceTime, FaceBook Video Chat, Google Video Chat? It's all the same to the user.

With $7B they should have just given away about 15 million Windows Mobile phones in the form of an epic PR stunt. It's not a bad product -- they just need to make people realize it exists. If they want to flush money down the toilet they might as well engage users in the process right?

Re: Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion

#88

Post by savrajsingh »

boyter wrote: post #58
ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #31

Goodbye "Skype®", hello "Microsoft Windows Live Connect for Windows Live®"

I doubt it. I would hazard a guess that a this is a mindshare acquisition not technology. It might be branded as "Microsoft Skype" but to drop the name Skype would be a seriously stupid move, and Microsoft is anything but stupid. Bureaucratic yes, but not stupid.

Foldershare was a good name. What happened to that? :)

Re: Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion

#90

Post by Dylan16807 »

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…

The linux client is missing a critical feature for me: joining an in-progress audio call. One call I'm in is almost always running, and the host is often not there to add me. I end up running windows skype in a VM when I'm on linux.
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