The news hit yesterday. Microsoft is buying Skype for $8.5 billion. Barring any regulatory hurdles, the well known internet-based voice chat system will be a Microsoft product.
Yesterday, the blogs were full of debate over the future of Skype and, of course, whether they overpaid for it.
I’m an everyday user of Skype. In fact, a couple months ago, I stopped running any instant messaging services and now only have Skype open. Well, that and Facebook (when I happen to be on Facebook). I even forked over a little money with Skype so that I can call land-lines from my desk with it. Works quite nicely, and my outgoing caller ID is set to display my Google Voice number.
So, I like Skype. But, lately, I’m becoming concerned.
First, it was their client “upgrade”. As I sit here, I am running Skype 2.8 on my Mac. The newest is version 5.1. I tried the new version and it…. well, sucks.
One of the great points about the Skype client has been the thin nature of it. It doesn’t have a large footprint and I can easily stash it along the side of my monitor and out of the way. The “new” client has been completely re-designed and now takes up FAR more screen space. It is bloated. The interface isn’t intuitive and simple like the old one.
What this shows is that Skype isn’t listening to their user base. I know a lot of people who use Skype and I don’t know one of them who actually likes the 5.x version. You should see people complaining about it (like this thread in the Skype forums).
And now, they sold to Microsoft.
On the business side of things, it makes sense. Microsoft is picking up a valuable asset – one which puts them in the ring with things like Google Voice, as well as brings some great technologies to Microsoft’s communications software (think integration with Outlook, for one).
But, now, Steve Ballmer is already talking about the huge revenue potential of video ads in the video chat service. Yay. So, we know we have that to look forward to.
But, it isn’t all bad at all and it is possible that Skype lovers are just being overly alarmed.
We may also be able to look forward to a better Skype client. Skype hasn’t been all that great at product upgrades and bug fixes and this is something that Microsoft is used to. In their leadup to Windows 7, Microsoft has really upped the ante in their testing department. They have thousands of virtual machines where they conduct automated testing. The results are seen in Windows 7, which by all accounts is the most stable OS they’ve ever released. So, I have little doubt that Microsoft can bring some serious resources and reliability to Skype – if they indeed dedicate the resources to do it.
Microsoft also has the potential to make Skype more reliable using something like Windows Azure. Remember the big Skype outage because of a “node” going down? They could potentially also improve video streaming quality. Microsoft has some stellar video technology in both Silverlight and Smooth Streaming.
So…
Bottom Line
Ironically, a lot of the people I know who don’t like this deal use a Mac. So, it is quite possible that there’s just a little but of anti-Microsoft sentiment being brought to the forefront here. Plus, in terms of tech coverage these days, Microsoft is often on back-burner while we’re used to looking at Apple for innovation. But, assuming that Microsoft is going to screw this up is way too premature.
They know they’ve acquired something that is VERY popular and it would be a HUGE PR issue for them if they screwed this up. And they know that, no doubt.
My guess is that we won’t notice any major changes in Skype at all. I think we may see some increased reliability and perhaps more frequent updates to the software. I think most of Microsoft’s time is going to be spent on integrating Skype into other technologies. Integration into their enterprise communication platform is most obvious here.
I think the side effect to look for first is going to be Microsoft’s focus on their own platform – Windows. So, while they’ve promised to maintain it for non-Windows platforms, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Windows getting the focus.
Who knows… maybe someday, us Mac users will boot up Skype and see a big Microsoft logo splash screen. 
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I doubt you’d see any Microsoft logo because the product is probably destined to either be integrated into Office (like Visio was) or Windows Live. That means either the 4-square Office logo or the Windows flag.
Well, I was joking with that last statement. But, seriously, I don’t think you’ll even see a logo change. I mean, you might see the technology integrated like you said, but I think the Skype brand will remain separated and keep the logo. Too much name recognition there and they’d be idiots to change it.
Of course, MS has never been very good at branding. :-/
I use Skype for Linux and I have my concerns…
You’ll probably be fine. Like I said, the big thing is that Windows will probably get priority in terms of updates. But, they’ve said they will continue to maintain Skype for Mac and Linux.
I do hope the updates improve some of the quality of Skype since I still have issues with the quality of Skype. I am not a techie, I would rather put on my Mercurial Vapor cleats and play soccer rather than wait and wait and wait for Skype to get a decent connection for a two minutes conversation.
Skype has never really made any money. Very few people use the paid services. It has been sold more than once and nothing has changed. In the Philippines where I am based most of the time I can not use the video chat as the bandwidth here is just too slow. So if video ads become the game. I will need to look for another voice service.