May 11
11
Skyprosoft – Microsoft Buys Skype
announced on Tuesday it had acquired the VoIP service for $8.5 billion in cash. Skype is the world’s leading Internet based phone and video-phone client. It was used by over 170 people in 2010 to facilitate over 207 billion minutes in voice and video conversations.
The deal is one of the largest buy-outs in recent tech history and by far Microsoft’s highest priced acquisition ever. The company is staking a lot of capital and reputation on the outcomes.
Skype is best known for offering users (mostly) free voice and video options. One of its paid options allows subscribers to use their computers to make calls to phones. Virtually everyone in the search marketing world uses Skype as a means of communicating with each other and with clients. records shows and conducts interviews primarily using Skype. Connecting long-distance lovers and cross-continental collaborative business, Skype has evolved into an incredible and indispensable service for business and home computer users.
There are fears Microsoft’s purchase of Skype could very much change it from the service we know now. The firm has plenty of reasons not to change Skype but it also has a history of tinkering its way out of sure-things.
Microsoft is racing to add voice and video options to all applicable products it makes. Microsoft wants to enable conversation between Xbox gamers, facilitate video conferencing for businesses, and enable a grandmother to watch a grandchild reenact its own first steps. It wants to be known as the company that can do this for everyone in all applications super cheaply and super easily. Microsoft needs this as much as it needs to integrate it into Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Microsoft needs to distribute connectivity.
The future is in mobile and other micro-sized computing devices. Microsoft is frantic in its bid to catch up to mobile-market leaders Google and Apple, both of which have enormous leads in a sector Microsoft has dramatically underperformed in. Fortunately for Microsoft, many Google Android and Apple iPhone users are also users of Skype’s mobile phone apps. By buying Skype, Microsoft gets to form a direct and 99.999% working relationship with its rival’s clients. The deal also means Google and Facebook, the two other likely purchasers, don’t get to establish those relationships. One win multiplied by two losses equals three wins in Redmond’s world.
Perhaps Microsoft won’t mess it up. As it proved with Bing, when the wizards of Redmond really want to get something accomplished, they are capable of moving hilltops to compete with the Googlites in Mountain View. Skype gives Microsoft a huge amount of clout in the local search world. It can now easily connect mobile searchers with businesses on virtually every platform, regardless of who makes the operating systems.
Communication is the driving force behind the Internet and a VoIP client that uses distributed resources to create an ever scalable network is a brilliant buy for Microsoft, provided they can resist the temptation to destroy Skype by rebuilding it in whatever Microsoft thinks its image is this year. Here’s to hoping. We’ve known for some time that someone was going to buy Skype. Hopefully Microsoft is the suitor whose intentions best suits Skype users.
Jim Hedger
Jim Hedger is an organic SEO and digital marketing specialist. Jim has been involved in the online marketing industry since 1998 and a SEO since 1999. Best known as a broadcaster, interviewer, content writer and search industry commentator, Jim is a frequent conference speaker and organizer. He hosts the search focused radio show Webcology on WebmasterRadio.FM and is a WebmasterRadio.FM conference interviewer. Jim brings a wealth of knowledge, experience, passion and creative thinking to each project. Preferring a teamwork approach, Jim strives to inform and train his clients and their staff to run and maintain their own search and social media efforts.
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