Microsoft to acquire Skype • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype

#81

Post by LarryA » Tue, May 10, 2011, 10:53 PM UTC

tttp wrote: post #66

Can anyone shed light on this: "share the vision of bringing software innovation and products to our customers" Are they the only one sharing that vision? Are they software companies with a vision of dumping obsolete software and products to their customers ? Big fan of stuffing fluffy meaningless statements into each PR. This one is a keeper.

"read share the vision of bringing software innovation and products to our customers" as

Grab a piece of (someone else's) software innovation and products and sell those to our customers.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype

#82

Post by LarryA » Tue, May 10, 2011, 10:57 PM UTC

I predict that in two years they will have successfully marginalized their investment into 'Microsoft Skype' - part of the OS/Office/Outlook suite.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype

#83

Post by zmonkeyz » Tue, May 10, 2011, 11:19 PM UTC

I was really hoping Sony would be smart enough to adopt Skype one day as their game chat system but oh well.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype

#84

Post by zmonkeyz » Tue, May 10, 2011, 11:20 PM UTC

encoderer wrote: post #80

lotusleaf1987 wrote: post #68

Skype+Kinect+XBox actually sounds pretty cool, even WP7 seems to have some potential. I actually think MSFT made a good move and it was worth it to keep Skype out of the hands of Google/Facebook. If I were Microsoft I would even look at buying out Pandora/Spotify/Slacker/Last.fm, Netflix, and remove the file limit on their Windows Live online storage to compete more directly with Dropbox and others--then there'd actu…

I've been thinking the same thing. Look at the modern smartphones. The lesson I take from iPhone and Android is that if you build a device that has a fair amount of memory, a modern processor, and an array of interesting sensors and input devices, developers will build for you amazing applications, killer apps even, in ways you're not able to imagine. I imagine a next-gen xbox. It has kinect built in. Great APIs for…

I'm loving my WP7. Oh well maybe next time :)

Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype

#85

Post by ignifero » Tue, May 10, 2011, 11:22 PM UTC

What's next, MS? LinkedIn?

Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype

#86

Post by xtfunlp » Tue, May 10, 2011, 11:52 PM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #57

roadnottaken wrote: post #17

Hopefully Microsoft is swooping in to save Skype from the death-spiral it's been heading towards for the last few years. There really is a lot of room for improvement (software-wise) and I'm going to give MSFT the benefit of the doubt for the moment.

I don't see a new Linux version coming...

I was thinking the exact same thing when i read the headlines. But not that the linux client is (was) as good as the mac or windows versions...

Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype

#87

Post by nikster » Wed, May 11, 2011, 1:19 AM UTC

roadnottaken wrote: post #17

Hopefully Microsoft is swooping in to save Skype from the death-spiral it's been heading towards for the last few years. There really is a lot of room for improvement (software-wise) and I'm going to give MSFT the benefit of the doubt for the moment.

The "new" Skype on OS X is certainly total garbage. They just keep making the UI worse and worse. MS isn't exactly know for making great UIs so I am not holding my breath there.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype

#88

Post by dforeman » Wed, May 11, 2011, 1:45 AM UTC

I just don't think Skype is a 8.5 billion dollar feature, especially any MS implementation. It's not like Skype was a closed platform- they have an API and their policy is to let the market decide which UX will win. I'm sure MS could have built all the features they want without buying the company. Apple already used the video conference marketing gimmick anyway and it's not exciting anymore. Who uses Facetime? Video conferencing solutions are good enough.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype

#89

Post by peregrine » Wed, May 11, 2011, 6:01 PM UTC

dataminer wrote: post #64

peregrine wrote: post #45

My girlfriend has been traveling abroad and we haven't used Skype once. We just used the built in capabilities of Google Talk. Its a simple plugin for the browser, doesn't sit on my machine bugging for updates and slowing down my startup time. No dropped calls, good video quality, and simple integration.

I have been using google talk but recently switched to skype because my wife got an iphone and google talk does not work on it. Skype on iphone is really painless to use and call quality is also very good.

Thats one of my biggest gripes, there is not Google Talk voice on the phone. I don't think Carriers would like it very much if Google had a free voice platform.

Re: Microsoft to acquire Skype

#90

Post by qeorge » Mon, May 16, 2011, 4:06 PM UTC

tene wrote: post #79

qeorge wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the underlying tech, Global Index, is patented and valuable. Global Index is the p2p matchmaking software that runs under Skype (and Kazaa back in the day), which means Skype doesn't have to run centralized servers to route call data. Its also what lets them punch holes in firewalls. My understanding is that their competitors don't (can't?) do this. For example, SIP runs through a central server (e.g., Goog…

You seem to be confused about SIP. SIP is the "Session Initiation Protocol", and its entire point is to coordinate initiation of a direct session between endpoints, the so-called "SIP Trapezoid". SIP is a lot like SMTP. When you make a SIP call, you talk to your local SIP server, which talks to N intermediaries (usually 0) before going out to the public internet. After passing off to the destination server, the conne…

Thanks tene, that's really good info. I was 100% turned around on that - definitely thought SIP had to route the call data through a central server.