Slashdot Mirror
FTC Approves Microsoft's Takeover of Skype
BigCorona writes "The US Federal Trade Commission said that it has approved Microsoft's $8.5 billion cash takeover of voice and video-over-IP provider Skype. Microsoft officially announced its intent to acquire Skype back on May 10 and since then users have been taking to Twitter to blame Microsoft for Skype's intermittent service. Now, with Reuters reporting that there has been antitrust approval of the deal, users will be able to turn to Microsoft when asking questions of Skype's sometimes-spotty service."
you may laugh, but it is BECAUSE of the linux version that I and my entire family use skype.
The reason, it's simple. 3 of the 6 family members use either linux or mac.
What that means is 3 platforms all able to video chat. We don't care about versions or the "latest" features. If linux or mac support is dropped, we'll have to find something different. Video support just works on all the platforms with skype.
Microsoft may be greedy and all, but that's very unlikely. Skype has been a consumer-oriented technology trying to upsell to companies (a bit like the anti virus companies of the day yonder). Expect this to be available to all Windows versions, except perhaps "Starter". However, expect it only to be available for Windows 7. Linux support will be lackluster (it wasn't already stellar in the first place) and be abandoned because of "lack of interest". The OS X version will be maintained but will always be feature wise behind and Apple will simply start a competing technology.
What I could see, is that it gets bundled with Microsoft Office or so... Under the guise of "collaboration" tool.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Perhaps one change will be that PostgreSQL will no longer be moving forward so fast in the realm of free and open source high availability databases. Skype uses PostgreSQL for it's backend and has created SkyTools for managing replication and failover for a large numbers of servers. It's the biggest user I'm aware of, but I don't follow sql development that closely.
Maybe like hotmail running linux they will try to port it over to Azure or something. They could learn a lot.
More likely this gives the automatic ties to a global communication network that already has ties to the telecommunication systems. Windows Phones use skype instead of sms. Audio and video calls and conferencing at the cost of bandwidth. Huge installed user base on desktop, PC, iPhone and Android.
Like a game of go they just did a really neat move that opens up a lot of new possibilities for the future.
Maybe like hotmail running linux they will try to port it over to Azure or something.
Hotmail was running on FreeBSD. And when Microsoft took over Hotmail, they had a ton of problems when they tried to move it over to MS-only infrastructure. And then the clean Hotmail UI was replaced by the butt-ugly, commercials-encumbered abomination that Hotmail was up until a few years ago.
It's still an abomination compared to the original Hotmail, by the way. I stopped using it shortly after the MS takeover, and had no reason to look back. I shudder to think what will happen to Skype.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
No, because Skype is popular.