It seems that Microsoft is planning to buy Skype for $8.5 billion! I'm not a Microsoft hater. I think the XBOX is cool. And while my main desktop computer is now a Mac, I still think Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office is good business software. Heh, but I'm not sure what they see in Skype. That's a crazy amount of money. Why didn't Microsoft simply build their own system? $8.5 billion is $65 for every American household. They could have built a Microsoft phone and given it away for free. It could have been something like... "XBOX PHONE, NOW WITH VOICE CHAT!" I think this is a move by Microsoft to get moving in mobile. If they don't catch up quick, Google and Apple is going to eat their lunch. Yet, with $8.5 billion to spend, they couldn't do better?
I have mixed feelings about them buying Skype, but I'm glad they'll be bringing it to Kinect. That will be quite nifty indeed. I wish the video camera on Kinect was a bit better quality, but it will do.
I'm pretty convinced Kinect is terrible by now. It's no better than the cheap, innacurate hardware bundled with the Wii and combining it with Skype isn't going to fix that or the awful games available for it. On the plus side, perhaps you'll be able to put your wobbly, idiotic dance moves on display for the entire planet.
Well deals went through it seems. I have mixed feeling about this myself on one hand I prefer them over facebook but on the other they could gradually make it windows only and there isn't really a good alternative. Could it vanish from IOS, Linux, Macs. I think it easily could but they would probably do that very slowly. Hopefully a real alternative launches I know there is google call but that's not in the UK yet. My bright side is I've been using it less on my ipod and more on my netbook recently I'm not sure why exactly but the call quality seems a good bit higher even though they are both on the same wifi network.
Well, I like Kinect as-is (Kinect Sports is great!) and the Spring update coming this month is supposed to improve accuracy including being able to track facial expressions, eyebrows, etc), plus they just released a developer kit update that allows devs to reduce input lag down to "less then 5 milliseconds", but this isn't about Kinect gaming. It's about Skype. Kinect is also a video camera, and being able to use it with Skype is a no-brainer, and something I was hoping they'd add. So I'm happy about that.
I don't use Skype all that often, but it is my first choice the few times I want to make a video call. One big concern comes from looking at Windows Live Messenger... remember when that was good? Now it's bloated, ugly, full of advertisments and "premium features" and sucks memory like a b*tch. With MS at the helm, Skype could so easily head the same way. They'll try to incorporate it into their existing products and force you to install everything just to use the one service.
Well, remember that eBay bought Skype for way too much money in 2005, so there's a little bit of precedent here ... call it "Companies that don't really need Skype buying Skype for way too much money." I like that; it's catchy.
There is value to the brand Skype. How many times have you heard people say, "I'm going to skype so-and-so tonight"? Add in the value of their infrastructure and software/interfaces and there you go. Although, $8.5 billion still certainly sounds like a little much, but I do think Skype is more popular than most people think.
Honestly? Never My aunt uses it because she lives in Switzerland and it means we can call her through a local number (London, UK) and save money, but other than that I don't know anyone that really uses it except on rare occasions.
I'm worried it will focus on Windows, WP7 and Xbox, with the others getting the short shrift. I wonder if we'll ever see an iPad native Skype client. I hope they don't go that route (I mean, short shrifting other platforms!)
