That goes through: bye-bye Skype. It was ~okay to know you.
Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion
41–50 of 277 posts
Re: Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion
#42I hope Microsoft Skype does not require a hotmail account. This is good opportunity for Skype's competitors such as FaceTime to grow.
Re: Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion
#43If this goes through, I wonder what would happen to Skype's Linux and Mac support. I'd hope MS would still support it, but I don't think they have any Linux software currently (I'm not positive about that, so please correct me if I'm wrong) and the Mac version of Office is always delayed compared to the Windows version. I hope Skype doesn't similarly languish.
I've used the Linux version of Skype. It's rather bare-bones.
Re: Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion
#44TFA talks about how this "could play a role in Microsoft's effort to turnaround its fortunes in the mobile phone market". Personally I feel this could be more about Microsoft strengthening its enterprise communications portfolio. Communicator/Lync is a giant turd, and this could be their play at Cisco's market, rather than Apple/Google's. (Incidentally, the Skype chief exec Tony Bates is ex-Cisco)
I must disagree. I've loathed Live Meeting for years, but Lync is stellar. I vastly prefer a Lync call/meeting to dealing with Skype.
Re: Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion
#45TFA talks about how this "could play a role in Microsoft's effort to turnaround its fortunes in the mobile phone market". Personally I feel this could be more about Microsoft strengthening its enterprise communications portfolio. Communicator/Lync is a giant turd, and this could be their play at Cisco's market, rather than Apple/Google's. (Incidentally, the Skype chief exec Tony Bates is ex-Cisco)
I haven't tried Lync since it was re-branded from communicator. Communicator is very special in that it is one of the few teams that the 'Live' team could look down on.
Re: Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion
#46There 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.
Re: Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Faced with 3 awful choices they chose the one with most money.
I don't disagree with you as to what happened, but I'm genuinely curious as to why you think that Microsoft, Google and Facebook are all awful choices.
Google has no support, Facebook is staging a war against privacy, and Microsoft has some pretty meh software outside of Windows (when they bother to have any version at all).
I guess ultimately MS buying it was not the worst decision - a second-class client on non-Windows is better than Google not supporting it till the users give up and they can discontinue it, or Facebook defaulting to telling the whole frigging world every time you phone someone or sharing your Skype address with every scabby app developer out there.
But it was really a lame lineup to choose from. I don't know who I'd actually have liked to buy Skype, but not these three.
Re: Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion
#48I have a feeling that Microsoft was suckered on this one. Google and Facebook probably had no interest in skype, but bid it up so Microsoft would have to pay more. You'd think after all these years, and having this same thing happen time after time that they'd know that trick and see it coming. Guess not.
Re: Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion
#49Re: Microsoft to buy Skype for $7 billion
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't forget about the Android and iOS apps. No doubt those will be killed off as well.
Interestingly, if Microsoft does buy Skype and make it Windows only, they would be opening a huge door for GChat as [EDIT: the obvious] cross-platform client. FaceTime too, I guess, if Apple decides to move in that direction. If Skype isn't the default, verbed, system, doesn't it lose some value?
GChat is already totally cross platform since it's just XMPP. There are tons of clients out there. You can run your own jabber server and connect to @gmail.com addresses, even.