Microsoft To Acquire Skype for $8.5 Billion
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 10th May 2011 08:19 UTC, submitted by porcel
Microsoft So, the biggest acquisition in Microsoft's history. The Wall Street Journal reports - and it has been confirmed - that Microsoft and Skype will announce today that Redmond will buy Skype for $8.5 billion. That's a lot of money for a company that hasn't ever actually made any profits. Update: and it's official: yay on Skype on the Xbox360 and Windows Phone, and this: "Microsoft will continue to invest in and support Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms." Let's hope this includes Linux.
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RE[3]: Good riddance
by lucas_maximus on Wed 11th May 2011 08:53 UTC in reply to "RE[2]: Good riddance"
lucas_maximus
Member since:
2009-08-18

That's a warped version of the events. They participated in standard bodies, but never implemented the recommendation, even when it was based on a Microsoft technology. Like svg. Based on Microsoft's VML and HTML +time, they flatly refused to support it in any way what-so-ever. They kept the crufty half broken predecessors, but never improved them or went to the standards. They held everyone back by not doing anything at all to keep up with the developing standards. Which meant that when a competitor did arise that followed the standards that microsoft itself helped develop, everyone was held back by microsoft.


Which was nothing to do with IE6. There was nothing else worth developing for at the time.

As for SVG ... I never seen it used, I never need to use it on the web ever. I never had a use case where I've needed to use it.

Most websites their code doesn't even pass validation (I run a firefox plugin that validates my markup as develop so I can see instantly whether a website passes). So it nice that we have cool things like SVG etc ... but most

Your xp argument is also flawed by the lack of compatibility between operating systems. You could not in 2005 switch to any other non-Microsoft program and expect the existing programs to just work. Monopolies that have high start up costs to compete with tend to stick around for a long time, despite a lack of development.


The lack of compatibility was vendors not using the APIs.

I have plenty of programs from the Win98 era that work fine on Vista and 7, wait a sec there is one that doesn't work ... Visual Studio .NET 2003 ... which isn't supported anymore.

I would like to see how many MacOSX programs and Linux programs that require a GUI you could still run from 2004 on modern systems. I guess it nowhere near the number that are working on current versions of Windows.

Office...? Not sure why or how that held anyone back for a decade. It could be better, but its fairly decent, but your opinion of open office is about a decade old.


It isn't decent. It kinda good enough most of the time, but OO is miles behind even Office 2007.

Its good now. Office 2000 was decent, but I'd say OO.org is better because of the openess of the file format and the fact that they don't break compatibility with older formats. Access 2000 couldn't open Access 1997 databases without converting them to the 2000 format, which meant any one still using 1997 version was SOL. OO.org will never do that BS.


Nobody gives a shit about the openess of document file format except the GNU brigade.

Most businesses roll out updates to office company wide so everyone is running the same version, so it becomes a moot point in 99.9% of circumstances.

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[4]: Good riddance
by Bill Shooter of Bul on Thu 12th May 2011 14:25 in reply to "RE[3]: Good riddance"
Bill Shooter of Bul Member since:
2006-07-14

Which was nothing to do with IE6. There was nothing else worth developing for at the time.


This makes no sense. Obviously ie6 could be improved, otherwise they never would have done ie7. They could have done ie 7 and released it ... earlier.

As for SVG ... I never seen it used, I never need to use it on the web ever. I never had a use case where I've needed to use it.


Yeah, thats because up until ie 9, Ie didn't f-ing implement it. So you couldn't use it, because Microsoft was holding everyone else back by not implementing it. Even though they were on the standards committee that created it based off of their technology. Its like complaining that you never saw a use for the internet in 1994 because microsoft didn't have a browser, therefore the internet is worthless.


I have plenty of programs from the Win98 era that work fine on Vista and 7, wait a sec there is one that doesn't work ... Visual Studio .NET 2003 ... which isn't supported anymore.


You didn't understand what I was trying to say. What I meant was that you couldn't switch from windows xp to Fedora and use the same programs. So regardless of how great Fedora Core 1 was, it may not have been practical because of the binary incompatibility.

Nobody gives a shit about the openess of document file format except the GNU brigade.

Most businesses roll out updates to office company wide so everyone is running the same version, so it becomes a moot point in 99.9% of circumstances.


Except those who have an older version of Microsoft office that can't read the newer versions. As a known "computer guy", I've been repeatedly contacted by people experiencing this problem. People get the latest version of office and save things in a newer format and send that out to others that have older versions that can't read the newer format. It sucks. Telling people to pay an extra $140 per pc to upgrade isn't a good solution for them. Showing them a free program that can open and save in the newer format is.

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[4]: Good riddance
by redbeard on Thu 12th May 2011 14:32 in reply to "RE[3]: Good riddance"
redbeard Member since:
2006-03-11

Which was nothing to do with IE6. There was nothing else worth developing for at the time.


And why weren't there alternatives? This is exactly how the MS monopoly held back progress. They killed Mosaic with dirty tactics and Netscape by bundling (kill two birds with one stone). Then using their dominance in the market and web development products spread non-standard web sites further locking out competitors.

Notice how much work they put forth on IE until FireFox began to eat into their market share . . .

Monopolies don’t need to put money into advancing a product until a viable competitor force them too.

Reply Parent Score: 1