Skype: Has Microsoft's $8.5B Spending Paid Off Yet? Can It Ever? 147
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by
Soulskill
from the can-you-just-make-it-close-when-i-hit-the-X dept.
from the can-you-just-make-it-close-when-i-hit-the-X dept.
mspohr writes "The Guardian has an article by Charles Arthur who predicted over two years ago that Microsoft's purchase of Skype for $8.5 billion was 'a gamble unlikely to pay off.' Arthur has penned a followup providing a fairly detailed analysis of his original criticism (he was wrong about some parts), an update on Skype performance, and a conclusion that it's not as bad as some of the other acquisitions. 'Skype, the company points out, now connects directly into Office 365, Xbox, Windows 8, Bing, Microsoft Messenger, Windows Phone and Lync, its business-oriented VOIP solution, and soon into Outlook.com for everyone. ... Certainly, integration of Skype into all those offerings is what the purchase should have been about. And it does look as though Microsoft has pulled it off. ... But has it pulled off $8.5B worth of integration?'"
Re:And why... (Score:5, Funny)
Why, so you can discuss the TPS reports, of course.
Other than that, I have no idea since there's already collaboration tools which do all of this and it doesn't need to be in Excel.
Sounds like bloat to me.
How much money... (Score:2, Funny)
... was forked over from the US Government to add a convenient back door to Skype?
Ask again next year if u lyke (Score:4, Funny)
> Skype: Has Microsoft's $8.5B Spending Paid Off Yet?
Skype's Former Owners: Yea bigtime!!!!2!1!!!1
Re:the future (Score:4, Funny)
Admit it, you have no friends, and you don't want your Mom watching you watch porn....
This is the Internet... I am sure there is a subgroup that does want this.
Re:How much did Google spend? (Score:4, Funny)
Where I work, it's either Hangouts or ye olde fashioned phone calls.
So what is it like working for Google?
Re:the future (Score:4, Funny)
My bad mind saw "huge penetration" and made me think of Chatroulette, and not Skype.
Re:The NSA paid for it. (Score:5, Funny)
> It should be obvious that the money didn't come from Microsoft. It came from the NSA.
> They wanted to wiretap all Skype conversations. They got Microsoft to buy it for that end.
Why would NSA pay Microsoft, a US company $8.5billions to buy Skype from eBay, another US company?
> You'd be nuts in the post Snowdon world to assume anything else.
Tell me about it. NSA has cameras in every corner of my house. Outside in the trees. In my toilet. Many of my kids' toys need batteries, not just for moving the motors in the toys but they have cameras and mics in them too. I do my best to get rid of this stuff. When I threw my wife's DSLR and cell phone in the garbage along with all the kids' toys, she first gave me the blank stare and then started screaming at me. Small price to pay, if you ask me.
Some people say that I am overreacting. But they don't know much of what I have read on the Internet. Only if they had read some of the same forum posts that I have.