Reply to: Skype

[Sysman]

Have MS taken control of it yet?

Or do they need to get permission from monopoly commissions?

Yep, they did need permission from the US Department of Justice:

Microsoft gains DoJ anti-trust approval on Skype buy

And heads have rolled already:

According to Bloomberg, which cited three people familiar with the matter, a number of senior wonks at Skype have been fired.

The news wire said that four veeps - David Gurle, Christopher Dean, Russ Shaw and Don Albert - were told to leave ahead of the deal closing.

[d000hg]

What about AIM, yahoo, etc? They are pretty big - before Skype MSN wasn't the only big player.

[Sysman]

Why would they need that? It's not like they are buying full rights to Linux.

'ere we go:

Did Microsoft buy an IM monopoly with Skype purchase?

More and more analysts are coming round to the idea that Microsoft’s Skype purchase was strategically a very wise more, but we still hear all to often, largely from tech bloggers, that the $8.5 billion will soon be wasted due to Google Talk taking over.

The truth of the matter is however that there are really only 2 big IM networks in the world, Skype and Windows Live Messenger, and the two combined likely have over 80% of the IM market. Of course no-one knows how how many active Google Talk users are, and Google has never told anyone, but as it is confined to a percentage of the 200 million Gmail users, likely not much bigger than Yahoo Messenger, and when Skype and Messenger merge the network effect will be immense, ultimately locking out other smaller IM networks.

Microsoft has many plans for Skype, but merely owning 80% of IM may well be worth $8.5 billion all by itself.

[d000hg]

Down to 72,003 online now apparently. Was 2m 30min ago!

[d000hg]

It went down about 30min just now. Back up again.

Oh wait. It was green but when I tried to open the window it crashed. When I restarted it forced an update on me. Now I am showing online but every single one of my contacts is not.

I blame Microsoft

That's what I'd expect an idiot to say. Hmm.

[DaveB]

Skype dies on it's arse, again.

Skype hangs up on users yet again

[milanbenes]

yep down for me too

Milan.

[AtW]

Or do they need to get permission from monopoly commissions?

Why would they need that? It's not like they are buying full rights to Linux.

[Sysman]

It was offline for about half an hour and now back up and running. A strong guess would be that they are moving to Windows servers and they all rebooted after a Windows update.

Have MS taken control of it yet?

Or do they need to get permission from monopoly commissions?

[fullyautomatix]

It was offline for about half an hour and now back up and running. A strong guess would be that they are moving to Windows servers and they all rebooted after a Windows update.

[TimberWolf]

Not working for me either.

[MarillionFan]

It's all part of the plan to make you upgrade to a newly chargeable and more reliable model.

[administrator]

Back for me too.

And now gone again

[Cliphead]

Back for me too.

Still out here.

[TimberWolf]

I had a nice email from Skype the other day warning me that my credit would be locked if I didn't make a phone call soon, and as chance would have it I wanted to make an overseas call anyway, which I think cost peanuts. I could hear an echo of myself talking, but I am generally pleased with the service, especially as it can be done using my iPod Touch.