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.

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.

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

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

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Apple’s iPad tablet and Windows-powered personal computers are fundamentally same. The only difference according to Ballmer is that the iPad can’t do much of computing when compared to PCs.

In an interview with Wall Street Journal tech columnist Walt Mossberg, Ballmer said that iPad is only “a different form factor PC.” Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, however has labeled the device "magical."

In the D: All Things Digital conference this week, Ballmer said, "The real question is, what’s a PC? Nothing that people do on a PC today is going to get less relevant tomorrow. There are usage cases. Whether those are done today on PCs–or alternate devices. (And the latter) are going to grow in popularity. There’s no question about that. Particularly entertainment-oriented scenarios. (But) there will exist a general-purpose device that does everything you want because I don’t think the whole world is going to be able to afford five devices per person."

I thought iPad was a general-purpose book reader to compete with Kindle. Now, what would a general-purpose device from Microsoft look like? We might get the answer by next year.

Microsoft’s Photshop blunder on a Polish website caused uproar on racism and carelessness costing them an apology. The black man had his head removed and replaced by a white man. The designer forgot to replace the hand of the black man. The Asian on the left was lucky enough not to be doctored.

Microsoft realized its mistake and corrected it by replacing the photo with the original. But some people were quick enough to notice the haste by which they changed the photo – the text spilled out of the text box – which was corrected afterward.

Do you think the photo looks good enough?

Well,  the monitor doesn’t have a power or video chord connecting it to the CPU. May be MS has come up with wireless technology for power supply.

The laptop looks more like a Mac minus a logo than a PC. Yes, Photoshop can do wonders with a logo.

Why on earth they couldn’t have an actual keyboard while doing the photo session? At least that would help the lady to position her hand properly on the keyboard.

Somebody came with another photo in which Microsoft changed a Macbook to a PC Laptop, back in 2005.

Original Photo with a Macbook:

MS changed the photo with a grey laptop:

Well, Microsoft is not alone in such Photoshop blunders. Many advertisements have such blunders and there is a nice site featuring 100s of such blunders.

In response to the Microsoft’s wish to purchase Yahoo for $44.6bn, Yahoo and its other sites’ users express dissatisfaction. Most evident were the photographic presentation of users of Flickr.

Yahoo! seems like dead. The funeral will cost Microsoft 44.6$ bn. And seeing as I don’t want my photos on “Microsoft flickr”, maybe it’s time to move on to Google’s Picasa. Eoow! ((( View large I HATE MICRO$OFT

That was what Anthony Sigalas says. It is interesting to read user-created group on the site is called “Microsoft, keep your evil grubby hands off our Flickr.” too.

I won’t say anything about it but some of the images posted in the site are interesting enough:

It seems Canada is going to attract big business due to its immigration policy. In a recent news, Microsoft is opening a new office in Vancouver this fall to develop software programs and locate new talent.

Reason given for the new establishment sounds like businesses in US are not happy enough with their immigration policies. “There’s a restriction on the number of visas the company can get for foreign employees in the U.S.,” Sharif Khan, vice president of human resources of Microsoft Canada said “Canada’s slightly more inclusive in that respect.”

Canada is currently the third-largest source of recruits for Microsoft outside the United States, after India and Japan.
Sources: CBC|turkish press
Tags: Microsoft, Vancouver, Canada