Micro$oft Buying Skype?

Lance Uppercut

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Microsoft is said to have wrapped up an $8.5 billion (£5bn) deal to acquire internet phone service Skype.

The terms of the acquisition - which is expected to be officially announced today - have come as a shock to analysts, who feel the deal vastly overvalues Skype.

While Skype has 663 million registered users worldwide and would give Microsoft a foothold in voice and video communications, most of its existing services are free "and it has barely bumped along on profitability", the Guardian reports. It has debt of $686 million, which Microsoft would assume.

Analysts have speculated that Microsoft could integrate Skype into existing products such as the Xbox 360, Kinect and Office.

A Skype application for PSP was launched in January 2008. Sony has also said it may be on the cards for PS3, while Skype has suggested it would technically be possible to bring the service to the DS platform.
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C&VG

So what does this mean for Skype?
 
god only hopes they leave skype as it is because it works well, unlike those cnuts at google who bought youtube and keep changing little things about the site
 
I very much doubt they'll leave it as it is seeing as it makes feck all money and has no real advertising at present. 8 billion is mad money.

Google really did buttfeck youtube didn't they?
 
The 8 billion includes the debt. Still ricockulous, though. They obviously have big plans for it.
 
Skype, will no doubt, now turn into a shit paid service, with apps removed from the Apple Market place, possible Android in an attempt to make it into a bargaining chip to get people to buy windows phones.

8 billion dollars.. they're going to make their money back somehow.
 
there's no way they'll turn it into a paid service, that would be suicide. They'll just throw feckloads of adverts on it.
 
Lets hope that they don't go down the route of integrating Skype into Live messenger because I much prefer the Skype interface over Live Messenger.
Although I can see them integrating it into XBL because with Kinect already being quite a big seller for MS, it would be really good if you could Skype through your Xbox.
 
They'll probably add a feature that allows you link your MSN to your Skype. It will undoubtedly be made available on kinect, weather for free or paid remains to be seen. They'll also cover it in advertising. I wouldn't be surprised if they use it in their phones either.

Skype is just a better version of Live so you can bet your ass that everything Live does MSN will soon be doing, hopefully at a better standard if they keep the people who develop Skype on the staff.

And, 8billion... feck me, the founders of Skype are laughing all the way to the bank.
 
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