Ok, is it just me or anybody else notices that at this rate, there will be 2 maybe 3 major companies that owns every piece of technology that we use? I’m fairly sure it’s part of staying in the competition against Google’s relentless dominations, but Microsoft $8.5billion bid to purchase Skype in May this year is now approved by the EU. After being approved by the Department of Justice in June, EU has finally sanctioned the bid noticing “Skype is not an Enterprise solution”.
If you can imagine the possibility of having the developer of the number 1 software maker in the world combined with the most popular communication tools in the Internet, I think it’s hard not to be excited. Microsoft has their own technology being used with Live Messenger, but it’s a far cry of Skype’s PC-to-Landline capability, browser integration, subscription plan, hardware integration (Samsung and Sony has Skype TV in the works, complete with embedded webcam and microphone). If we can have such functions built into Windows, perhaps also merge Live ID (which at Windows 8, will become your PC credentials as well) with Skype user ID, that’s a fantastic step toward unifying (for better or worse) a global credential. Less password to remember and the right step toward integrating technology even deeper with our daily lives.
Of course, not only aiming at Google who’s been trying to merge all of our Internet experience through one pipe, this deal puts Microsoft smack dab into the fight of Cisco and Avaya; the two biggest companies in the IP-phone industry for business. The past decade have seen the IT competition peaked at the dot-com bubble, burst, spiral downs to mobile app industry boom, and mega-corporation going neck-to-neck.
In the end, I believe the best thing to do for those companies is to remember that if we mind the balance (and limit) between technology integration and advancement, and a healthy competition, the winner at the end of the day is always the customers.
Additional NewYorkTimes article
Update: Well that didn’t take long. It’s now finally official. Skype is a division of Microsoft.
