Embrace, Extend and...

Well that's the Embrace step out of the way...

Get rid of the competition?

I used to use Microsoft's Messenger quite a bit to keep in touch with family members. The video, speech and text capabilities were adequate for what I used it for. For business, except for the early days, it has been almost exclusively Skype. Especially since my main day-to-day system became a Mac. The Mac clients for Messenger and the open source clones could not hack video. Like a lot of the people commenting, I have never used the pay for service.

At the moment I have two messenger clients -Skype & Messenger- and I suppose in the future I will only need the one. That might be deemed good news :-)

I know - I'll get my coat.

3rd party clients

I wonder if the axe is going to fall on the non-offical clients?

I foresee banner adverts in the official client like MSN now.

Have to register

EddieD: "..and Skype required me to register for access...yep, it still does - name, email, date of birth, gender, birthday..."

Yes, but none of it has to be true - apart from email and even that can be a one-shot freemail which you only use for Skype. They only know stuff about you if you tell them...

J

Dammit - N8/Symbian^3

Now there's fuc*k-all chance of video calls on my N8. Can't see MS doing it, even tho' it was promised by Skype early this year.

Don't suppose they want it for the encryption?

-Nah....

Time to get serious with ekiga and jabber

Between them, ekiga for purish VC and telco-style calls for those who want them but mostly a client like the cross-platform pidgin along with a jabber.org account (no names, no personal details required) does what skype does without stealing your bandwidth. Oh, and inter-operates with other XMPP services too.

Bah so what

Let MS waste their money on stupid things.

Skype's not all that important. They've past the point of innovation. Once upon a time MySpace was the be-all end-all social place to be, then Facebook appeared, then woop did someone waste a load of money?

Microsoft just pissed $8.5 million on a boring company. Boring, boring boring, that's Ballmer. Guy has zero vision.

Apple buying Nuance seems even less silly than this story - and that one is just a rumour! :p

Too right

I think that after the Nokia/Windows Phone announcement (and don't get me started on that), the chances of video-calling - or any further features, really - being added to the Symbian^3 Skype client from here on, was somewhat on a par with "UK winning Eurovision". Suspect this can now be revised downward to "killed more dead than a Norwegian Blue".

Now I look, there's a distinct lack of alternatives for Internet-calling (audio or video) between desktop/laptop and mobile. We use Skype for video-calling my parents abroad; they won't switch just because of Skype's new owner, so the service would have to deteriorate some way before they'd consider leaving.

I just wish that Fring had a cross-platform desktop application to match their mobile one - if they did, it might make the road ahead a bit straighter...

Great

After the tremendous job of finishing off multimap, now skype.

A title is required.

"Meanwhile, Skype's 170 million users will be hooked up to Microsoft's Lync, Outlook and Xbox Live products, as well as other communities, said the software vendor."

ifeeldirty

congrats to skype

Nice job Skype management. - who comes up with these valuations anyway? Seriously $50 per 'user' - hell I have 3 accounts and I never use any of them these days.

Skype has 8.5 million actual paying users = real users = MS paying $1000 per real user = wow!

Skype 2010 revenue was $406.2 million = $47.76 revenue per real user

*Best* case scenerio I would have put skype at 1/10th of what MS paid at $850M

* historical % profits are low - sneeze and you will miss it

* revenue is based on skype out credits which are less and less relevant these days due to direct voip calls

* current valuation is based on an ever increasing numbers of users - which we all know will tend to level out

the M in MBA stands for Moron don't trust them.

Suckers LOL

8B too much.

How long will my iPhone be supported

I'm wondering how much longer I'm going to be able to use my iPhone - the original Linksys/Cisco one, not the Jobsian one which I never bought.

Oh well - its been good for the last 3 years.

G&T's all round at Silver Lake

And probably a few white lines as well: what an astounding piece of business: virtually get paid by ebay to take Skype off their hands and then get given loadsamoney by Microsoft for a product without a really credible business model - most telephone networks I know are cheaper than Skype Out and easier to use. Who said private equity companies don't know how to make money?

What I like about Skype - peer to peer messaging that doesn't run through a server. I use it for voice about twice a year. Wonder how long it will stay like that? I haven't upgraded since it was sold to ebay - I assume all subsequent versions have nice backdoors for the CIA, Mossad, etc.

Here is a thought

When I first heard of this I knew that MSoft would want it for integration into existing products... never forget that in the corporate world Office rules supreme. Add all these millions of users into Outlook directory services, live services and the integration of Office and VOIP to millions of businesses makes sense. Another reason why corporates do not need to diversify away from an integrated tool set. Office seats and associated revenue rule supreme.

Here is an additional thought. Now that a US company owns Skype, the national security services of the good ol' US of A have full access to the encryption keys (all six or seven layers) of it.

This is a big deal in the erosion of privacy.

Skype good, MS evil?

It wasn't so long ago that people were bemoaning Skype for its proprietary closed protocols. So now there's a prospect of it being subsumed into Windows Live Message Network MSN Explorer (or whatever it's called) that's apparently a bad thing?

At least the various other (open source) chat clients I use can successfully interoperate with MS (e.g. my Jabber gateway, Adium, Pidgin etc etc). So maybe this marriage (or rather adoption) will be a good thing?

Competition++

Well, now there will be an explosion in VOIP operators! Get on it people!

Isn't it great Microsoft owns my phone calls NOT

What a shame, Skype had credibility, it wasn't owned by any vendor so we trusted it. Now it is owned by Microsoft should we trust it?

There is no point in buying this app unless you want to do something with it, the revenue model makes no money of any significance. The only point of buying it would be to (a) stop someone else buying it and (b) change it, incorporate it into your ecosystem. Oh god but what is MS's ecosystem?

Dare i say its more open than Apple's? That Balmer doesn't vet the billions of apps available to download on a windows platform from anywhere and that windows doesn't have a bloody app store icon on its task bar (on no that would be anti trust violating wouldn't it?) .. and skype was just one of those apps that got downloaded and worked in spite of Microsoft and Apple, now it will be one of those Microsoft Apps that works because of Microsoft and we all know what that means , Skype will be Voice Live, it will mingle with Office Live, it will get bloated like an overfed kid .

What i loved about Skype was it was totally open, It was its own ecosystem but one that just did the job, even with the most recent meltdown the open frank disclosure of the issue was a breath of fresh air.

So here comes Windows Validation Tool, Silverlight plugin for Mac, use your windows dead account oops live account to login , no thanks,

$8billion of madness but i suppose they know what they are doing right?http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/graphics/icons/comment/pirate_32.png

Skype was dying anyway

All those people who claimed skype was the best should ask why they did not pay for the premuim services earlier.

Skype was making a loss year after year, they would have died eventually or they would have been bought by Google which would have assimulated Skype into google talk (could be a good thing or a bad thing), Apple would have done they same as they prefer their brand name (facetime) over the Skype one.

Why worry, its not going to change much and I don't think the multi platform support will dissapear (apart from the linux version, which is a maybe).

Hey whinging Idiots

This is good news. Windows Messenger has the lions share of IM users so combinind Skype with Messenger can only be a good thing. Plus it's one fewer IM inter-operability issues in the future.

The video and audio calling capabilities of Messenger are okay, but replacing them with Skype is a good thing.

Encryption - Stooge for the NSA?

given the complete absence of any business case for the scale of this acquisition, I am minded to cynicism.

One of earlier (Anon Coward) commenters on this story suggests they might want it for access to their encryption "or perhaps the NSA do".

That may not be that far fetched. We know that the various security services have expressed concerns at their inability to eavesdrop Skype calls. Perhaps they figure if a friendly co-operative new owner can let them look under the hood..

8.5 billion? billion with a "B"?

really? for skype? come on! seriously? there's a 8.5 billion other IP video/chat solutions out there... the only thing skype has in it's favour is a large user base. They just payed $100 for two accounts i don't even have passwords for any more! LMAO!

Not that I'm complaining mind you - skype is the reason everyone is using different incompatible protocols. If MS succeed in killing skype as efficiently as they have killed everything else they have ever bought, then we may get mass adoption of a new open protocol. That would be cool!