So of course the big news of the day is that Microsoft has just spent 8.5 BILLION dollars to buy SKYPE of all things. When I heard about this yesterday of course my knee jerk reaction was 'seriously'??? The first thing that came to mind was 'this is just a game of keep away from Google.' Looks like I was right.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-buys-skype-for-85-billion-creates-new-business-division/9406?tag=mantle_skin;content
My take on this whole situation?
Well, obviously they’ll never make their money back on it, that’s for sure. My gut reaction is they did this out of peer pressure from Google. MS hasn’t really been doing much acquiring in the last few years (nothing compared to what they used to) whereas Google has been acquiring all over the place, with things such as YouTube, etc. Personally I think they bought Skype because they figured if they didn’t Google would eventually and they just wanted to beat them to the punch. (Which based on the story above seems to be the case.) In fact this is starting to feel like a game of Monopoly with everyone trying to grab every property on the board regardless of its value, just so that no one else can have it. (And paying way too much in the process.)
There could be some really cool possibilities coming via Lync integration (through PIC I am assuming just like with Live Messenger, AOL, Yahoo, etc) and integration with Xbox Live/Kinect. I wonder if they will just replace Kinect chat with ‘Skype powered’ chat. Who knows. Based on my experience though the codec’s used by OCS/Lync for audio/video (especially the RTA codec) are far superior to that of any other product, especially Skype.
I’ve been asked if this is an over-lap with Lync. It isn’t really over-lap with Lync per se. Skype is more consumer based where Lync is business based, but there are a lot of companies who use Skype for business calls to companies in India, etc. My guess is that MS will change the license agreement so that businesses can’t use Skype for free as a way of trying to push them towards Lync. (Which doesn’t mean that companies won’t still do it, but that will be MS’s way of ‘nudging’ them towards it.)
So, long story short I think it was an insanely bad idea, and it was a reactionary one, not a visionary one. I could be wrong and I hope I am, but this seems like a putting the cart before the horse type situation.