Skype and Microsoft
At a price of $8.5 Billion all-cash deal with close to $2.5 Billion going to ebay and ~$1.2 Billion for the founders, Microsoft has made a strategic purchase of Skype. I believe Lync and Skype will have superficial integration for user credentials and cross-communication but beyond that, I doubt we will see anything any time soon. The acquisition is more about not letting Google get their hands on Skype. I also think that Microsoft won’t be killing off Skype clients for other platforms since losing those users would be simply stupid.
Skype becoming a part of Windows Live and becoming critical for video calls between Kinect, PC (Windows+Mac+Linux) and phones is highly likely or at least exciting.
An excerpt from my article on how Skype and Microsoft make sense for Techie Buzz:
There is a belief that Microsoft will be coming up their answer to FaceTime for WP7 which will be powered by Lync in the background but might have a different branding, a re-branded Skype simply makes Microsoft’s efforts easier. While the number $8 Billion sounds crazy, there were some really smart people at Redmond crunching numbers projecting the worth of this acquisition. Keeping in mind cloud and communication in the next 5 years, Skype as part of Microsoft gives the Redmond company a huge user base and infrastructure that will not be part of either Facebook or Google or Apple.
Microsoft® Skype™ Professional 2011?
