Skype has a product that corporate users want - voip/conference calls/video conferencing. MS has access to that market, which Skype did not really have.

Skype has a massive user base(663 million registered users as of 2010). These users also have contact lists - business, friends, and family. Think of these social connections in a user base larger than facebook. MS wants more into social.

Skype has a massive amount of peoples credit cards on file, and agreements with those people.

Skype has a huge botnet(110 million+ active nodes). Many of the computers running Skype process data, and use their internet pipe for Skype. Remember Skype is a P2P network.

The Skype brand is quite strong, and is something people like. MS needs to buy into brands like Skype, which people love - since many people hate the MS brand.

Then there is the raw talent they are buying. These are some seriously good hackers, and business people.

I think MS got Skype for a great price.

MS does have access to the market - but it's one increasingly dominated by Cisco and their solutions just work. I do not think Skype will succeed in the enterprise.

He's pretty much personally endorsing the deal, which is not savvy if he's tepid on it.

https://extras.skype.com/

for the corporate world, MS can probably do some big upselling into the PBX world.

I think their could be some interesting tie-ins to getting an integrated system working between the pbx of the company you are contacting, and web-based support. Theoretically skype could provide that for their already installed base.

I think the value behind the Skype acquisition is as a consumer-facing VoIP solution; think of integration with windows phone, windows messenger, and xbox. Its great for consumers because its a brand that grandmothers are familiar and comfortable with.

Great,great for Skype but just great for Microsoft.

Really, I promise.. I'm not trying to be snarky... but can someone point out to me recent examples of "brilliant ideas out of Microsoft research" making a dent in the world I live in lately? I'm struggling.

[Edit - Quora-style-summary]:

1. Kinect, mostly

[Edit - soft apology / further expression of confusion]:

So, ample down-votes so far (expected), and lots of comments.. but still very limited in terms of interesting input about projects that have come out of MSR that have (as I put it) made a dent in the world. So far lots of people pointing at Kinect (and one person pointing out it was acquired), some noise about Surface, a mention of .NET. Honestly, none of which have made my life any better. That's not a bad thing though. I guess maybe I'm in the minority, and lots of you are living in a much better world because of Surface, or something.

At any rate, sorry if I've offended. I really wasn't attempting to call bullshit on MSR at all, I was genuinely curious (and yes, a little cynically suspicious).

I'm not as aware of other research to product transitions, but I imagine a lot of MS research's work has moved to .NET (I think F# might have started as a MS Research project?) Microsoft Research is one of the strongest divisions right now, they produce a lot of cool stuff, practical or not.

You're also kind of lazy for asking, as you could simply check their website, which contains a list of projects and papers published: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/research/default.aspx

The problem with Microsoft is that they aren't able to turn all that research into usable products. But that doesn't mean the research isn't valuable, some of the best ideas in the world have been happening ahead of their time you know ;)

Someone mentioned Haskell, they also do a lot in artificial intelligence, operating system research, security (yeah yeah I know), human computer interaction etc.

Not to long ago Apple passed Microsoft in profits, but that difference is much smaller than the difference in R&D budget. If you take that into account, Microsoft is much more profitable.

I expect lots of people to opt into a device the records their conversations... locations... images of the people around them... And the collates into some useable data using voice recognition + facial recognition + voice-to-text

The resultant data could be searchable by person... And bring up every picture of the person.. every conversation.. a map of locations where that person was with you (picture or voice)... etc... Anyway, MS Research has been working on similar stuff and I for one think that is going to be awesome technology someday.

http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/06/life-recorders-may-be-this-...

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/cambridge/projects/se...

My thoughts? Maybe you'd life-record in certain situations. For example, I do not believe representatives of businesses are required to be notified of recording while performing their official duties.

A recent success is the Kinect, which was the fastest-selling consumer product on record.

edit: From wikipedia:

    The product idea for Surface was initially conceptualized in 2001
    by Steven Bathiche of Microsoft Hardware and Andy Wilson of
    Microsoft Research.

Guess that's not really research.

2. Skype has 110m+ active users, and 660m+ overall users.

$8.5b is too much, in my opinion, but Microsoft obviously believe that it's a fair price to pay for the reasons above (among others, of course). The value gained is tremendous. What Microsoft does with that value remains to be seen.

What was he at other levels?

The presence of "at the board level" is distancing language. If he was personally fully behind the deal, he would be likely not to include that phrase and to add that information in a different structure.

My take is he's uncomfortable with the deal and was likely not fully behind it.

Bill's role is at the board level these days. He's not actively involved in the day-to-day running of the company.

But a decision of this magnitude is, without a doubt, a board-level decision. And there, at the very highest level possible, Bill was a strong proponent, he says.

And somehow you read this as him not being fully behind it?

If you take everyone, particularly people with great power, at the surface level of their language, you are missing most of the meaning. Indirect and qualified statements are usually that way for a reason. Read up on this - I'm sure you'll be fascinated.

Agreed it's distancing language but my guess is that he doesn't want to undercut Ballmer's authority.