13 May 2011

Microsoft buying Skype

The price tag seems high to me. $8.5 billion? with a "b"? for a money-losing service?

MS' problem, I suspect, is simply that its core business, involving Windows and the Office Suite, is sooo ... 20th century. The folks in the corporate suites over there must feel at times like they're trying to sell manual typewriters.

So they're reaching out, not just for peripheral activities, but in hopes of defining for themselves a new core.

In this case, they had to grab for it before Google got it. I understand, dudes. Really.

But $8.5 billion? Carl Sagan money. "buh-illions."

Here's Reuters from Tuesday morning.

And here are a few pertinent words from Felix Salmosn.

Note that the commenter on Salmon's blog entry makes a case that Skype wouldn't have made a good match for Google. Could Google simply have head-faked MS into a money-losing deal neither of them really wanted?
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Pragmatism Refreshed

Knowledge is warranted belief -- it is the body of belief that we build up because, while living in this world, we've developed good reasons for believing it. What we know, then, is what works -- and it is, necessarily, what has worked for us, each of us individually, as a first approximation. For my other blog, on the struggles for control in the corporate suites, see www.proxypartisans.blogspot.com.