Cisco Planning To Acquire Skype

rexjoec writes "Cisco is making a bid for Skype. The deal, if successful, would derail a planned initial public offering from Skype and redraw the battle lines in the lucrative market of video communications." The rumored price is $5B.

Comments

Re:Cisco Planning to Squash Another Competitor

[Kepesk]

Buying up companies at a frantic pace seems to be the hot trend among powerful corporations.

Soon there will only be two corporations: Microsoft-Cisco-Skype-NBC-Pepsi-McDonnalds-Halliburton-Friskies Corp and Apple-AOL-Time-Warner-CBS-CocaCola-BurgerKing-BP-FancyFeast Corp.

Then you'll start getting weird messages on your computer... "You better not buy Fancy Feast." "We saw you drink that Pepsi."

Re:Cisco Planning to Squash Another Competitor

[TooMuchToDo]

The problem is cash sitting around doing nothing. NPR was running a story yesterday talking about how the top 120 companies have over $1 trillion of cash sitting around, and investors are demanding they either distribute it to them via dividends or invest it via mergers and acquisitions. So, yeah, if it's either earning 0.5 percent in a money market account or buying up a ton of relatively cheap companies with the potential for a much larger return, you go on a spending spree and buy up whatever you think is going to have a decent ROI.

Re:Cisco Planning to Squash Another Competitor

[Archangel Michael]

Google Voice (aka Grand Central),
Google Chat, now with phone dialing (PC to PC, PC to Phone VOIP)
Gizmo5 (Acquired last year)Voip Telephony Company
Adroid Phone

Google has ALL the pieces needed to make a serious run at SKYPE, which is why SKYPE is running to Wall Street now looking for IPO or White Knight, IMHO. SKYPE ought to be scared, because they don't have the bulk and push Google does.

And Google doesn't have to sit on Gizmo5 much longer, if they are working towards integration of the four. The pieces are almost there for the first and complete VOIP end to end network, with Cell as backup.

THAT is just how I see it.