Tony Bates, the Silicon Valley-based president of Microsoft’s Skype division, uses a MacBook Air and made sure that Skype employees received badges with Skype logos — not the standard-issue Microsoft badges — following the Redmond company’s $8.5 billion acquisition of the Internet communications company.
Those are among the colorful tidbits from a New York Times story over the weekend offering an update on Microsoft’s integration of Skype, the result of the largest deal in Microsoft’s history.
The NYT’s Nick Wingfield reports that the number of people using Skype has risen 26 percent over the past seven months to nearly 250 million monthly users.
That still pales in comparison to Facebook’s 900 million, but it elevates Skype’s status among the most-used Internet services, and supports Microsoft’s decision to acquire the company. Skype had only 52 million monthly users five years ago, according to a regulatory filing by the company.
However, as the New York Times explains, the real test will be how Microsoft integrates Skype into products including Windows 8 and the successor to the Xbox 360. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer promises to maintain Skype’s cross-platform compatibility but says he wants the service “to be first and best on Windows.”
For more details, read the New York Times story here.
