Skype is being criticized for terminating employees immediately prior to the closing of the Microsoft acquisition, and people are assuming they’re doing this to keep the value of those employees stock options. Skype’s response boils down to saying that the employees were fired because they weren’t good employees, and that the value of the stock is negligible and didn’t affect the decision making… → Read More
Members of Skype’s investor syndicate are adamantly denying the Sunday Bloomberg story that implied that several Skype executives were fired because private equity firm Silver Lake Partners wanted to save a few bucks paying out the proceeds of the Microsoft-Skype deal.
We spoke with one just now who reiterated what other unnamed investors have said in the press this morning: That the decision… → Read More
In October 2010, Skype debuted new Windows software with deep Facebook integration, adding the ability to use the client to monitor your Facebook news feed and post, like or comment on status updates straight from your desktop. This morning, the company (which has been acquired by Microsoft in the meantime) released Skype for Windows 5.5 Beta, which now also lets you have instant messaging… → Read More
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission said today that it has approved Microsoft’s $8.5 billion cash takeover of voice and video-over-IP provider Skype. Microsoft officially announced its intent to acquire Skype back on May 10 and, since then, users have been taking to Twitter to blame Microsoft for Skype’s intermittent service. The criticism, at least in that sense, has been a bit preemptive. At… → Read More
Rebtel considers itself to be one of the biggest threats to the Skype empire, so I was interested in learning from the company’s CEO, Andreas Bernstrom, how they felt about Microsoft acquiring their main rival for $8.5 billion in cash.
Unsurprisingly, Bernstrom said the acquisition ‘validated the market’ but he also had some more interesting things to say, mainly about VoIP and mobile telephony… → Read More
Skype appears to be down, or at the very least it is for a whole lot of users throughout Europe who are tweeting in a ton of different languages about their inability to connect. Many blame Microsoft, and even founder Bill Gates for the downtime, which is sort of strange because the multi-billion dollar acquisition of Skype hasn’t even closed yet.
Anyway, let’s pray that this isn’t a repeat of… → Read More
Skype is no stranger to patent litigation. One time, even its founders pursued a lawsuit against it. But this is a new lawsuit, not yet reported as far as I can tell. What’s more it was filed in the U.S. on May 10, 2011—the same day that Microsoft announced its $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype.
The case is Via Vadis Vs. Skype (embedded below) and was filed in the Eastern District of… → Read More
Exclusive – Mobile communications startup fring, fresh off the heels of launching group video calls for smartphones, has raised a Series C round of financing from existing investors, TechCrunch has learned.
The amount that was raised is actually not being disclosed, but sources close to the company tell us that fring secured another $10 million in venture capital, bringing its total of funding… → Read More
The backstory of last year’s film Tron: Legacy picks up where the first film left off. Kevin Flynn teams up with Tron to create a new Grid, one meant for programs and users. But Flynn realizes that he can’t be in the system working on this constructed world all the time, so he creates another program, CLU, to help with the effort. Together, the three of them work on creating this… → Read More
At 35 thousand feet you can see the future of push notification more clearly. The in-flight WiFi won’t sustain FaceTime or Skype video, but it handles IM just fine. GTalk is buried in the Gmail menus; it has no iPhone or iPad version. Neither Skype nor Facebook Chat have iPad versions, but they do support push notifications through iPhone. Facebook Chat sends push notifications but goes offline… → Read More
Exclusive – Earlier this week, Microsoft dropped a bombshell on pretty much the entire technology industry, acquiring VoIP juggernaut Skype for a baffling $8.5 billion in cash.
One side-effect unrevealed up until today: TechCrunch has learned that Skype came extremely close to buying Swedish startup MyWidz right before negotiations with Microsoft were kicked into high gear, freezing said… → Read More
Exclusive – Earlier this week, Microsoft dropped a bombshell on pretty much the entire technology industry, acquiring VoIP juggernaut Skype for a baffling $8.5 billion in cash.
One side-effect unrevealed up until today: TechCrunch has learned that Skype came extremely close to buying Swedish startup MyWidz right before negotiations with Microsoft were kicked into high gear, freezing said… → Read More
With Microsoft having confirmed its acquisition of Skype, sources tell TechCrunch Europe that Redmond outbid its closest rival, Google, by almost two-to-one. Meanwhile, Facebook is said to have never been in the running.
According to a source who claims knowledge of talks held between all parties, Google came in second at a price of $4B, while Microsoft will be paying $8.5B. This suggests that… → Read More
In the wake of today’s news that Microsoft is buying Skype for $8.5 billion, CEOs Steve Ballmer and Tony Bates just held a press conference to explain the deal and sell it to investors. The reaction has ben tepid, with Microsoft shares down about 1 percent so far today. As I’ve pointed out, Skype is a great company, but there are concerns that Microsoft paid too much.
In today’s press… → Read More
Microsoft’s purchase of Skype for $8.5 billion in cash is a massive bet for the tech giant.
Although it look like it may well have over-paid by $4.5 billion, and bid against companies who weren’t seriously in the running (Google and Facebook), owning Skype means Microsoft has a much better positioning in mobile.
But that’s not all.
The implications of this deal for Facebook are actually far… → Read More
The deal is done. Microsoft is buying Skype for $8.5 billion in cash in its first sizeable acquisition since August 2008, when the Redmond software giant spent $486 million on Greenfield Online.
In fact, this is Microsoft’s biggest financial bet to date in terms of M&A, trumping its $6 billion+ purchase of aQuantive, which dates back to May 2007, in size.
The $8.5 billion question: did… → Read More
With Microsoft having confirmed its acquisition of Skype, sources tell TechCrunch Europe that Redmond outbid its closest rival, Google, by almost two-to-one. Meanwhile, Facebook is said to have never been in the running.
According to a source who claims knowledge of talks held between all parties, Google came in second at a price of $4B, while Microsoft will be paying $8.5B. This suggests that… → Read More
The deal buzzards are swirling around Skype, and Microsoft may end up with the prize. Om first reported the rumor, which is now getting major play by the WSJ. Microsoft is in final negotiations to buy Skype for $7 billion, according to the WSJ report. The final price might go closer to $8 billion.
Google and Facebook were also sniffing around Skype, which put off its IPO earlier this year to… → Read More
If you’re the proud owner of a new Skype-enabled 2011 Panasonic Viera television, there’s probably one question that’s been plaguing you: “Where the deuce do I find a decent TV-mountable webcam for this thing?” Well, Logitech makes one — same one they’ve had for six or seven months now — and now it’s specifically compatible with your TVs. Just… → Read More
The news from NBC/Universal/Comcast is that the cable giant has finally made deals with both ABC and Fox to carry selected shows on their on-demand service. This is big news for the iPad set, because all four major broadcast networks are now available in a single service, on the iPad, without Flash.
Across town we hear talk of hardware acceleration linking up with Android to make Flash finally… → Read More
The Gillmor Gang — Kevin Marks, Danny Sullivan, JP Rangaswami, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor — christened the new Gang studio with a surprise welcome to Kevin Marks. It turns out he’s joining salesforce.com on Monday, following JP (six months), JT (7 years), and me, who is celebrating my one year anniversary. Kevin has been a forceful champion of open standards at Apple, Technorati, Google… → Read More
Skype realizes full well its software is used by many school teachers and students from around the globe, and today announced that it has built a dedicated social network to help them connect, collaborate and exchange knowledge and teaching resources over the Web.
This morning, the company launched a free international community site dubbed Skype in the Classroom, an online platform designed to… → Read More
Utopic, the service that lets you see what content is trending amongst your friends, has closed a $70k convertible note from a number of angels, including Ahti Heinla, one of the founding team of Skype and its chief technical architect.
We’ve also learned that Vitaly Rubstein has also participated. He is an ex-majority owner and the “product brain” behind Russia’s largest social network… → Read More
As the company prepares for a public offering in the next year, Skype released an updated S-1 filing that includes several new revenue, income and usage numbers. As you may have heard, Skype initially filed for an IPO registration statement with the SEC, with the maximum proposed offering amount listed as $100 million (that is a placeholder amount.) It was thought that the IPO would take place… → Read More
As the company looks to boost revenue in 2011 in advance of an IPO, Skype is pursuing an aggressive enterprise strategy. Today, Skype’s VP of Enterprise, David Gurle, is announcing a strategic partnership with Citrix Online, in which web conferencing software GoToMeeting will be integrated into Skype’s enterprise offering, Skype For Business.
Skype For Business is a paid desktop product that… → Read More
This morning, French publication L’Express published an article stating that “Skype doesn’t respect French law and operates illegally.” Except that this is kind of yesterday’s news. Or news from 4 years ago, actually.
Back in 2007, ARCEP, the “French telecommunications police” (or the communications regulations authority, if you want to be politically correct about it) went after Skype for 3… → Read More
Cisco has long dominated the enterprise video conferencing world, but Logitech wants to change that. Logitech currently does video conferencing with their own version called the LifeSize video streaming system. As more and more business profressionals are skipping the airplanes and going for teleconferencing, Logitech sees an opportunity to gain some market share. And due the the large user base… → Read More
Sometimes using Skype can be a challenge — no cell data and secured WiFi doesn’t help. Skype hopes to change that. They just announced at MWC they are expanding their Skype Access by partnering with eight international WiFi operators: → Read More
For Skype, 2011 is undoubtedly going to be a pivotal year. The VoIP giant is preparing to go public, and armed with a new CEO, Skype is looking to add new products for both its consumer and enterprise businesses and boost revenue. Already, Skype launched video chat capability to its iPhone app, acquired mobile streaming startup Qik, and launched paid group video functionality to its enterprise… → Read More
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Skype’s IPO is being pushed back to the second half of 2011. Last August, Skype filed for an IPO registration statement with the SEC, with the maximum proposed offering amount listed as $100 million (that is a placeholder amount.) It was thought that the IPO would take place early this year, but apparently the company’s newly appointed CEO Tony Bates is… → Read More
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