Skype: Has Microsoft's $8.5B Spending Paid Off Yet? Can It Ever? 147
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, Informative)
I assume that by "built into your spreadsheet", you mean integration into Office365. It means that it can be centrally-administered by the company IT department, with contact lists, group messaging, security, etc.
Re:How much money... (Score:4, Informative)
Or at least to provide NSA with the algorithms and keys for Skype. If you have that then you don't need to add a backdoor.
It's time for something else now.
Re:How much did Google spend? (Score:5, Informative)
but how much it costs to aquire a well known company vs. build a competing product in house.
They mostly bought the userbase not the product.
Google churned out Google Talk / Hangouts.
Know many people that use "Hangouts" for business? Or would be willing to pay actual money to use "Hangouts" for anything? I sure don't. As a free service, yeah I know some people using it, and although I have at least 3 active gmail accounts and an android phone with it pre-installed (2 even linked to google apps for enterprises, I've still never fired up hangouts.
Skype is pretty ubiquitous by comparison.
Re:chess moves (Score:4, Informative)
Nowadays they expand until the NSA can read your mail and everything else ;).
Who's to say the NSA didn't ask Microsoft to buy Skype for them?
After all I'm sure Skype was a bit more inconvenient for them to monitor till Microsoft bought it.