Microsoft Acquires Skype for $8.4 Billion

[Guest]

windows phone 7 skype here we come

 

[Ragnar-Kon]

[citation][nom]eldesconocido[/nom]The government mostly has Linux-based servers.[/citation]
Most definitely not true. US Government runs mostly Windows servers. Sure they do have Linux/Unix and probably even a few Mac servers, but the vast majority are Windows-based.

And I'm fine with the change as long as the Mac version is still supported. The great thing about Skype is that it works well cross-platform. Because of this, Skype is something we use extensively at work since we have about a 65/35% mix of Windows/Mac machines. Without Skype I'll have to go back to supporting Microsoft Communicator on Mac *shutters*.

 

[shades_aus]

Well, there goes Skype for Linux.
Another great product gone under the wings of the Software Monopoly Microsoft.

 

[shades_aus]

Well, there goes Skype for Linux.
Another great product gone under the wings of the Software Monopoly Microsoft.

 

[TheKurrgan]

Microsoft has made some poor decisions in the past for innovation, but they do not make stupid business decisions. They did not acquire Skype to screw it up by pulling it off non-MS platforms, or fire the whole dev team or reinvent the wheel. The bought it for the user base and the technology. If they where to reinvent skype as something else entirely and screw up its multi-platform support or change the protocol, they would be undoing what they wanted to buy, which isnt a sound business decision..
And frankly as dumb as Ballmer is, Gates is still a powerful voice on the board of directors, which he is still on. He'd not go for another 8 billion dollar screw up such as the Phone of Windows, 7 windows phone, Phone 7 Windows--Pardon... WINDOWS PHONE 7..
As far as Microsofts ability to keep pace with the industry at this point, I think they went from leader to 3rd place. As both Apple + Google (pick your order) are both ahead of Microsoft for todays trends..

 

[fyasko]

[citation][nom]Zingam[/nom]I don't care about Skype but I care about their user base. More appropriate would be: Poor users!I really want to ditch Skype now if I can.Apple? Oh, come on! Apple is so far from being global company in every home.Microsoft is the devil: they are everywhere and they've ruined the PC experience for 30 years for billions of users with their overpriced wincraps! They've ruined so many good companies with their monopoly and they've wasted trilions of manhours of people trying to fix their crappy OSes full of bugs and viruses.Apple is no way near such dominaton and evil. Where you live you hardly see Apple products but yesterday I had to wait in line for half an hour in a government department waiting for the admins to reboot the Win2003 server.[/citation]

ummmm... walk down the street, everyone and their mother has an iproduct with white earphones... look at all the dolts driving around with white earbuds in... iproducts are everywhere. MS software has it's problems but so does unix, and linux variations. ubuntu is awesome but can't do everything well. I have had great success with MS os'es i just did research before jumping on board. my first os was '98 se, then 2000 pro, then xp, now windows 7. no bugs no viruses... just don't buy/use crappy products. remember businesses are out there to make money off of dumb people.