"Microsoft announced the Skype acquisition on May 10 and plans to connect it to Outlook e-mail, Xbox game console, Windows mobile phones and corporate-phone software."
This is phase #1 of Microsoft's usual "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy. Right now they embrace Skype and build it into some of their products.
The next step will be to enhance the Skype protocol with extra Outlook and Windows Phone options; these protocols will be proprietary, patented and certainly not published.
The final step will be to discontinue the Skype clients for OSX and Linux ('because their increasingly incompatibility with rich features the Windows platform offers Skype users'), update the protocol even further so that current Skype clients will stop functioning, and gradually remove the 'Skype' name and logo from their products, and eventually, from history.
The idea is to disadvantage any competitors, and to make Skype users switch to Windows or a Windows phone.
The Skype protocols are already proprietary and not published (I haven't checked if they're patented). It's not like Skype is an open standard or anything. This is one company that sells proprietary products buying another that sells proprietary products.
Microsoft would be stupid to kill Mac and Linux support for Skype (perhaps they may kill just Linux support). The value in a communication technology is in how many people can use it; the more people who are on it, the more it attracts. If they start cutting people off, it will become far less appealing for anyone to use, and very easy for a competitor without such restrictions on their network to steal customers.
This is phase #1 of Microsoft's usual "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy. Right now they embrace Skype and build it into some of their products.
The next step will be to enhance the Skype protocol with extra Outlook and Windows Phone options; these protocols will be proprietary, patented and certainly not published.
The final step will be to discontinue the Skype clients for OSX and Linux ('because their increasingly incompatibility with rich features the Windows platform offers Skype users'), update the protocol even further so that current Skype clients will stop functioning, and gradually remove the 'Skype' name and logo from their products, and eventually, from history.
The idea is to disadvantage any competitors, and to make Skype users switch to Windows or a Windows phone.