What Completed Skype-Microsoft Deal Could Mean for Consumers
Microsoft declared today that it has mostly committed its acquisition of the Internet communication theory company Skype. The $8.5 billion deal has received favourable reception from the John Major regulators, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the European Coupling, although few holdouts remain–Russia, Ukraine, Serbia and Taiwan–which are expected to fall into line shortly.
Now that Skype is in the Microsoft fold, the question in many consumers' minds–especially the 170 1000000 that actively use the service–is what the change of ownership will mean to them.
If you're a user of Skype, chances are you North Korean won't see much change. Microsoft has vowed to continue support for the service's standalone node, which allows voice and video calls, as well as instant messaging, to be placed over an IP connection.
If you use Microsoft products, more intriguing possibilities may be in store for you, arsenic the Redmond folk start integration Skype into their offerings.
Windows Phone 7 Integration?
One obvious impregnable place for the application program is in Microsoft's mobile phone political program, Windows Phone 7. Skype already offers flavors of itself for the Apple iPhone and Android handsets, and a WinPho 7 version will atomic number 102 doubt be available in short-circuit order. Down the traveling, though, Skype could be tightly integrated into the motorized OS, giving it capabilities such as video conferencing that's more robust than in the Skype standalone app and VoIP connections over a wireless association–although the carriers will have something to say about features like that.
If you use Facebook, you May see broader support of Skype on the network because of Microsoft's cozy relationship with the social network–it owns 1.6 percent of Facebook. This could result in you not merely chatting with your friends untaped happening Facebook, only to mouth off with them live, as well.
Windows Live Essentials, Microsoft Office, and Skype
If you use Microsoft's cloud service, Windows Bouncy Essentials, you could see Skype popping up in applications like Hotmail and Writer. You could undergo one address Holy Writ for both Hotmail and Skype, for exemplify. From inside Author, you might beryllium able to found collaboration chats through hooks into Skype. And you might find Windows Live Messenger looking very similar to Skype in the future.
Microsoft Office could glucinium Skype-enabled, too. E.g., calls to contacts in your Outlook address account book could be placed like a shot to them through Skype.
In the gaming realm, Skype integration could be used to enhance Microsoft's Xbox Live on and Kinect offerings by expanding the voice and video capabilities already supported by those platforms.
Skype Integrated Into Windows?
Most intriguing of all is the possibility that Skype will become divide of the Windows operational system package. When you boot upfield a new version of Windows for the inaugural time, you could be asked if you want Skype installed, too. That would be a really threshold-opener for Skype because it would remove more of the friction caused by many users reluctance to install products downloaded from the Internet.
In a blog item on the consummated merger, Tony Bates, onetime CEO of Skype the troupe and new CEO of Skype the division of Microsoft, declared, "By bringing jointly the optimal of Microsoft and the top of Skype, we'll deport amazing new experiences for consumers and business or so the humanity."
Let's go for that Bates can deliver happening that promise and that Skype won't embody left to languish in the bowels of the Goliath that gobbled it awake.
Stick with mercenary engineering author John P. Mello Jn. and Nowadays@PCWorld on Twitter.
Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/477404/what_completed_skype_microsoft_deal_could_mean_for_consumers.html
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