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Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion

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Re: Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion

#271

Post by teyc »

brettnak wrote: post #166
teyc wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, especially if the PC Facetime is crippled so that it can only chat to iOS devices.

I don't think they've ever done that before... why would the do that now?

You are quite right there. Windows environments are a haphazard mess of personal firewalls, routers. There is probably a reason why Jobs didn't want to go there.

Having said that, Skype showed that they could make it work.

Apple's valuation today is based on its growth trajectory. This means growing their customer base and engaging in hand-to-hand combat for existing PC users to move to the Apple platform. In some way, Apple's hands are forced.

Re: Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion

#272

Post by dingle_thunk »

jsz0 wrote: post #87

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 Sky…

Look at this as an enterprise VOIP play. Skype + Exchange + Dynamics CRM + OCS/LYNC + SharePoint is a pretty strong platform. Plug that all into Windows Phone and you've got a strong corporate platform generally.

Re: Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion

#273

Post by cookiecaper »

technomancy wrote: post #270
cookiecaper wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you clue me in? I just tried several a couple of weekends ago and it didn't work out. Twinkle was good but hasn't been updated for years and doesn't work with PulseAudio. Everything else barely ran.

Ekiga, Wengo, and Pidgin are the ones I've used; they all performed fine.

Ekiga doesn't pick up the other end of the call for me when I tried it a few weeks ago (the person is there but no sound output from their side of the call). I actually used Ekiga extensively for a while (I even wrote a partial patch for GCC 4.4 compatibility, this was ~early 2008) and could eventually get it to work most of the time, but it frequently had problems; it would crash, drop sound, leave the device busy from the last call, etc. Lots of problems with it. Went back to Skype.

I tried Wengo (now QuteCom) and couldn't get it to pick up the sound device or something like that. Maybe another PA bug, but PA has been a default feature of Linux desktops for 3-4 years or more by now. I don't remember the exact issue I had with it.

Pidgin isn't made for SIP/VoIP applications but I still haven't ever been able to get the gstreamer connector to respond correctly. The only IM client with which I've had success using video chat is Empathy, but it had a few issues too with closing devices/picking up subsequent calls.

Maybe it's just because I use Arch, but Skype is the only mostly-reliable video conferencing/SIP-like app on Linux that has actually been usable for me.

Re: Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion

#274

Post by hessenwolf »

gwern wrote: post #261
hessenwolf wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hold on - did Ebay just score a win with this?

Maybe; eBay paid $2.6b in ~2005 (OP says 3.1b, WP says $2.6b), and then sold off 70% of it for $2b ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype#History ). OP doesn't seem to specify how much MS is buying, but let's assume 100%, so eBay is selling its 30% too; 30% of 8.5b is $2.55b, so eBay sold its 2 chunks for 2+2.55 or $4.55b. That represents a profit of 1.45 or 1.95b over 6 years or $320m a year. (If MS didn't buy eBay's…

Thank you.

I wouldn't presume Ebay had better uses for the capital though. Skype has clearly had a faster rate of growth than Ebay. (although, paying an effing dividend would in my personal opinion be better than maintaining a thirty percent share of a telephone company)

Re: Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion

#275

Post by timedoctor »

jsz0 wrote: post #87

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 Sky…

I think you might overestimate how easy it is for people to switch from Skype. With all your Skype contacts, friends on Skype, the fact that many users would not even fully understand how to download another software program and install it, these are reasonable but not huge barriers to entry.

However did they overpay? In my definition anything that is more than 10 time net earnings is overpaying. So unless their net earnings dramatically improve to $700 million in a few years (unlikely), or unless there are some significant synergies that I am not aware of, I would say it's overpaying.

Re: Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion

#276

Post by mcarlin »

nikcub wrote: post #183

As many users as Facebook, many of those users have entered their payment details, a great brand that is just as big as Facebook, and synonymous around the world with communication. I just happen to be talking to a non-tech computer user on the weekend who told me that he and his entire family and friends overseas do not use Facebook because Skype does everything they need in terms of staying in touch and it has work…

>especially considering that Microsoft can significantly reduce expenditures by integrating the company into the web group

This is a business truth generally, but Microsoft has proved a very strong exception. Historically their attempts to integrate their web and communications acquisitions into the web group (or at least the Microsoft frameworks) have resulted in stagnation and/or collapse. Whatever they gained in operating costs, they lost many times over in value.

Hotmail, Mesh, TellMe, Groove, Colloquis, and Danger all experienced terrible stagnation as they integrated into Microsoft. Yes, even Hotmail, which has never recovered as a brand from the three or four year period where they moved from unix to windows servers, producing no new features and allowing Gmail to gain rapid traction.

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