When Reuters started the rumor about Skype buyout talks, it was Google and Facebook and Microsoft wasn’t in picture. But, suprisingly MS inked the deal on Monday to buy the  popular Internet telephony company for $8.5 billion. In addition, Microsoft will also take the $686 million debt Skype has accumulated over its life.

With the purchase announcement of Skype by Microsoft, the  users of Nokia/Windows mobile phones, XBox Live, desktop and laptop PCs running Windows OS can hope to find Skype tightly integrated with them in future.

The Xbox Kinect motion controller, Outlook and Hotmail email might also feature the video call options soon. Microsoft plans to use Skype as a competitor to Apple’s FaceTime.

Skype, founded by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friiswhose in 2003, was sold to eBay for $3.1 billion. eBay never integrated Skype with its online auction service. Unable to profit from Skype, eBay sold 70% if stake to investor group that included Silver Lake, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Andreessen Horowitz, in 2009, for $2.75 billion.

I couldn’t test the latest Microsoft’s latest browser Internet Explorer 9. It has been years since Microsoft threw away the Mac version of IE and now, it’s latest browser won’t work in Windows XP. I am not upgrading to Windows 7 to use IE 9! Following was the message I got when I tried to download the "Beauty of the Web" from here.

Internet Explorer 9 is only available for Windows 7 and Vista. However, we still recommend you download the latest version of Internet Explorer for XP. Get it here:

The browser is told to make maximum of use of graphics processor and is amazingly fast when compared to other browsers in market. If you have Windows 7 or Windows Vista, you can visit the link above and download the IE9 for free. I will appreciate your comment here on your user experience.

Google’s head of Webspam team., Matt Cutts’s blog is full of Bing and Google search pages, comparing what Microsoft has stolen from the Google search results. Google has accused Bing of shoplifting the Google search. Microsoft says, it is using user data gathered from the Bing Toolbar and IE8 Suggested Sites feature. Google does teh same thing – collect who-knows-what data with Google Toolbar and/or Chrome. Even an ex Google engineer says that Google does the same as what Bing is being accused of by Google.

I thought, others follow the leaders. And, leaders don’t care. It is only when the leader gets a feeling that he/she can’t keep the pace… will turn around and start telling the followers to do something other than following him/her.

In the similar manner, as long as Google has its innovative muscles it wouldn’t care what others copy. That was the reason it was giving away almost everything for free. At least, I thought it was like that until it started resisting others like, blocking Facebook access Gmail contact.

I might be completely wrong, and the change in behavior might be because of Larry Page taking over the rein. Kara in allthingsd thinks Google’s Bing attitude defines Larry Page. I hope, it is nothing more than the "drive and aggression" of Bill Gates within Larry as told by Kara.

If that is not so, may be, Page should let Eric Schmidt run the company and get back to work on his PageRank.

Some Hotmail account users have told that some of their e-mails have been deleted. They have posted the complaints on Microsoft forums saying – e-mails are missing from their inbox and other folders of their Hotmail email client.

Microsoft spokeswoman said that the company is working to solve the problem. The missing email issue is told to be limited to a small percentage of Hotmail users.

Did you see any missing emails in your Hotmail inbox and other folders?

New hands-free, camera-based game controller from Microsoft, Kinect, is amazing and it makes playing Xbox 360 video games feel like magic. You can wave your arms, move your body, punch, kick, and do all sorts of things in the virtual world.

Kinect is being launched worldwide starting with North America on November 4, 2010, followed by Europe on November 10, 2010, Australia and New Zealand and Singapore on November 18, 2010, and Japan on November 20, 2010.

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Kinect for Xbox 360 from Microsoft might be an instant hit

Microsoft has launched its web version of Office and e-mail to compete with Google’s similar offering, Google Apps.

Google Apps includes online word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation and costs $50 per year for business customer. Microsoft’s basic service will cost slightly more at $72 a year.

The new service will replace Microsoft’s previous similar offerings with various names like Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), Office Live Small Business, and Live@edu. The basic version of Office 365 includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint for collaboration, Exchange for e-mail, and Lync for communications.

Microsoft Office is far much better in terms of what it can do but it’s Microsoft’s way to enter the field a bit late and offer the service slow. It took seconds to open Google’s Docs but Office 365 is taking ages to open. I know, it is a new service, still in Beta, and they should be changing stuffs and polishing things – but, I was never a fan of Microsoft websites when speed is concerned.

Microsoft has unveiled Windows Phone 7, its new mobile platform, with five new handsets for AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile, on October 11, 2010. The OS will come in the European markets as soon as Oct. 21 followed by US launch in November and next year.

AT&T and T-Mobile will begin shipping Windows Phone 7 handsets in November. Similar devices from Sprint and Verizon will be available next year.

AT&T’s Windows Phone 7 devices include the HTC Surround, the Samsung Focus, and the LG Quantum. T-Mobile’s Windows device are HTC HD7 and the Dell Venue Pro. Sprint’s sole model HTC 7 Pro will be released early next year with Windows Phone 7 installed in it.

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Windows Phone 7 – the Zune phone has finally arrived

Today, Motorola announced that it has filed suit against Apple for patent infringement. In this contest, a Guardian‘s colorful flow-chart showing who is suiting who in the mobile industry, looked interesting.

Are these companies playing kids’ games? It looks like, the companies sue when they can’t beat the company in the receiving end.

I loved the another version of the same diagram better:

A Microsoft representative demonstrates Microsoft Windows Phone 7 at the Mobilize conference in San Francisco.

Microsoft tried to show it’s confidence on its upcoming Windows Phone 7 operating system by hosting a mock funeral ceremony of it’s rival phones including Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s Blackberry.

In the ceremony, hearses for the iPhone and the BlackBerry were carried along with Microsoft employees dressed up in Windows Phone 7 garb. The Microsoft employees even performed the "Thriller Dance" (see video, below) hoping the Windows Phone 7 to bury the competition.

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Microsoft’s Funeral Ceremony for Windows Phone Rivals