Microsoft buys Skype

Microsoft buys Skype

Last night, Microsoft announced its purchase of Skype, for a remarkable 8.5 billion dollars. Many were surprised, however, at the overpriced bid. Skype recently sold off a chunk of its company for a sum of 2.5 billion. Obviously, this means that the company is not quite worth what it was even just half a year ago.

Some people I know believe that the marriage between Microsoft and Skype will turn into just another fantastic operation that everyone suddenly needs at this very minute for every important job (think how Word transformed our school lives). However, I think that in this case, Microsoft has bitten off more than it can chew.

Every major, successful project that Microsoft completes rakes in the cash. But, a major reason that they do that is because they force people to pay - give them six months to get addicted on OneNote, and now they have to buy that new $250 + package with all the trimmings included. They successfully do this with other programs, such as Bing! Cashback rewards (use their service, score points, use points to buy coffee mugs with the brand logo printed on it), but in the case of webcam services, this probably would not work with competitors such as Oovoo.

Both companies offer extended features with the purchase of 'credits;' however, both of the services work perfectly well without the additional payments. If Microsoft wants to get back its investment in Skype, it will have to increase the chance of users purchasing credits - which they would probably do by limiting the number of options there are to work Skype without credits - limiting the number of minutes that can be made during one video call, perhaps.That's probably one of the only ways that they could make money, and once they do, everyone will just flock back to Oovoo..again..

But hey, I'm not an economic analyst. Any other ideas of what'll happen?