The fun and games predicted are starting!
Facebook has added Skype to its services, in an expanding collaboration with Microsoft , and in response to the competitive threat of to Facebook by Google+ launched recently.
This collaboration will not make the integration and building of a commercially sustainable Skype by Microsoft easier, if anything it will add complication, because the fit between facebook and Skype seems so logical, and culturally much easier than the fit with Microsoft, and the twins may just turn on the parent, leaving Microsoft again out in the cold having funded the party.
Time will tell if there is any parallel between this set of deals and the humbling fiasco that was the recent divestment of Myspace by News Ltd, an instance where the cultures of an “old economy” business trying to transform itself and taking a bath in the process, although it seems pretty amazing to put Microsoft into the “old economy” bucket, but culturally, that is where it belongs.
