Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Microsoft to Acquire Skype for $8.5 Billion
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
This isn't a partnership though, Microsoft spent billions for this acquisition. And as a true Mac person, you should hope that Microsoft loses the $8 billion along with market share etc, etc. Then the Apple supporters can say, I told you so and it gives them another feather to put in their cap. And they can keep hoping for the day that Microsoft goes under so they can gloat and feel superior.
The Skype owners have made a helluva profit for a short term investment. They didn't lose anything.
Pretty sure we're just chatting on the internet. Let me check my walls.....
Nope, no new holes in them. Must be pretty calm about it all......
Besides, most people are talking about one of 2 things:
- Microsoft just spent too much, so wasted maybe $3-4b, this is a standard reaction from a stockholder perspective (more data needed at this time)
- Worry that Skype will disappear in its current form, always an issue when any larger company buys out a smaller company with a particular product
****, yeah. Happiest people on the planet today.
For you to complain about Microsoft so much I am going to say it's you using it incorrectly. User error.
Tell me your address and I will mail you a copy of this:
I appreciate your offer but unfortunately I will have to decline. However, Bill Gates might be able to use a copy of the book as evidenced by his inability to get Windows Media Center to work on the Conan O'Brien show.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gtYoPGvcFI&feature=related
I am a former .NET Applications developer trained at a Fortune 100 Microsoft shop where the culture lived and breathed everything Microsoft. Further, I have used Windows since 3.1 and had enough of the buggy software by the time Vista came around. I am pretty sure I am well versed in the shortcomings of Microsoft technologies that are beyond the help desk level.
As a self employed consultant, I have clients still on Windows and I like them very much because it's easy money having to fix their broken Windows on a regular basis. CHA-CHING!
Also, I actually had to show a Windows advocate (that happens to be an engineer) here how to operate their beloved Internet Explorer a few weeks ago when they had trouble viewing my animated GIFS. Now that was funny since I am a Mac/Linux guy now. ROFLMAO
See posts #5562 and #5564
https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=12301687&posted=1#post12301687
Last edited:
Fool me once, shame on you; Microsoft [Buys] partners with Yahoo [overvalued]
fool me twice, shame on me; Microsoft buys Skype [too high-a-price]
Can't fool the fool...
fool me twice, shame on me; Microsoft buys Skype [too high-a-price]
Can't fool the fool...
Last edited:
MS didn't buy Yahoo.Fool me once, shame on you; Microsoft buys Yahoo [overvalued]
fool me twice, shame on me; Microsoft buys Skype [too high-a-price]
Can't fool the fool...
I have to agree with you Facetime needs to go multi-platform to really take off. Which I guess Apple did want by trying to make it and Open Standard built largely on other open standards.
Well not that they tried very hard as it doesn't seem like the standard is even under review by any standards body as yet. That would seem like the important thing for Apple to do to compete with the likes of MS/Skype get the standard public, even maybe build a reference implementation in to one of the open source PABX's like Asterisk. Give people especially corporate people that it's not something controlled by one company in fact in could be something they can control themselves if that is warranted for them.
No doubt there are codec licenses involved with the system but someone running a PABX that sounds business like is most likely already paying for those codec's with that.
I think that would be a better move for them than building clients on other platforms.
Again, this is a sign of "everybody against Apple". Apple has managed in the last years to do everything so right and on its own that looks impossible for others. So the logical reaction from the competition is "to join forces": Google buying YouTube & giving away Android, M$ partnering Nokia and now buying the so-popular Skype, Oracle buying Sun, etc. Interesting that Apple does not partner at all. It just buys high-tech start-ups to essentially improve its own tools. Apple does not buy (8 B$) services. It just builds them.
I am wondering how much time Apple can keep up functioning like that. M$ has essentially done not much innovation in the last decades, but still they can spend 8B$ for a service. It is scary.
I am wondering how much time Apple can keep up functioning like that. M$ has essentially done not much innovation in the last decades, but still they can spend 8B$ for a service. It is scary.
At the present time, I see Microsoft as competing more with Google than Apple. They want Apple as a customer.
Agreed.
Microsoft and Google will heat up more in the future as they both battle for their online services that they're both heavily invested in. Apple, so far, is pretty basic in that area and we'll see if they can get involved in a significant way.
I remember having discussions with you in the past. Your Windows knowledge always seemed highly questionable so I will stick my neck out and say that you were using it wrong.
Yes, I know quite a few. What does that have to do with Skype? If you have an iPhone, chances are you can already make phone calls. (Or for video chatting, use Facetime. I've used it twice since June for novelty.)
Maybe it's because I've been using Teamspeak for years...
I'll admit I know few people outside the US...and all of my friends with iPod Touches are too idiotic to set up VoIP. Telling them that their iPod can make calls is like telling them you figured out alchemy.
I don't see why you would think that. Skype is making a lot of money on non-Windows products.
Maybe you're confusing them with Apple, who does this repeatedly.
Don't be doing irrational things like speaking the truth, or the fanboys will vote you down... oh look, they already have.
Fwiw, I agree with you. Apple does not rule the world, and, tbh, they're becoming quite boring and predictable.
[edit]
Ironically, people in apple circles are always waffling on about how so-and-so copied this, that or the other from the mighty apple, and yet look - MR has "copied" (?) the digg vote up/down feature.
Wrong. Steve Ballmer himself has said that they will continue to develop Skype for all platforms.
What a wonderfully simplistic and distorted world view. "Apple supporters" like to say "I told you so", put "feathers in their caps" and are "hoping for the day that Microsoft goes under so they can gloat and feel superior."
Whilst your assessment of Apple supporters' mindset and sartorial preferences are way off, we do, quite rightly and logically, look forward to the day Microsoft loses its status as the planet's equivalent of a Cali drug cartel in the lives of the lazy addicted masses. Why? Because addiction to bad **** is bad - simple.
But, as inadequate as it was as a business, as an independent VOIP innovator, Skype was very very important, and an independent Skype was also equally important for users and the business world in general.
So a Skype owned by Microsoft kills everything was about, should have been about and ever could have been about. The Microsoft deal is pure Ballmer vanity. After 10 years of failing to do anything useful or innovative, he's assumed the role of Little Bill Daggett, the Gene Hackman character in Unforgiven - a man renowned for his megalomaniacal, violent intolerance, who wasn't even any good at his hobby.
I would value the Skype brand at say $850m, the user base at $900m and the intellectual property at maybe $1b. That makes Skype worth precisely what ebay sold it for in 2009. And having added no estimable value in the intervening years, I'd say that's its TRUE value today.
Who knows what goes on inside Ballmer's head, but if you've got one VOIP service already, what possible reasoning can there be to buying another - especially at such a massively inflated price? It simply defies logic. One will have to be killed off, or inevitably compete with the other, thus cannibalizing their own market share. You don't have to be an "Apple supporter" to recognise that, you just have to have your head in air that's free of the Al Bundy of tech's dark dark rear passage.
But if Apple had bought Skype, they wouldn't be duplicating a service they already have - which is what MS has just done. And despite Apple having much deeper pockets in terms of disposable cash, they tend to spend it more wisely. I suspect Ballmer's price was based on his fear that Apple [or Google] was indeed prepared to pay a high price. He's like the fat boy in the playground when the other boy's candy bag burst...
Oh well, that's fine then. One statement from Steve Ballmer - the Al Bundy of tech, is enough for me. Oh yes, all my fears are allayed now...
Someone give me an irony pill before I pass out. Make that two!
I'm not aware of a product where Microsoft has done that.
What you describe is a tactic Apple has used.
When asked about MSFT's track record of supporting other platforms, he could only mention Office for Mac. 99% of people have no faith in what MSFT promises.