And so begins the next chapter of Skype… first it was a scruffy little startup taking on the telecom world… then it became somewhat bizarrely part of eBay… then it went back to a private company owned primarily by Silver Lake Partners… and then… to the utter amazement of so many of us… Skype announced it would be acquired by Microsoft!

And today that acquisition is official. Microsoft announced in a news release and Skype announced in a blog post and video from CEO Tony Bates that the acquisition has formally been concluded.

The deal is done. Skype CEO Tony Bates is now the president of the Skype Dvision within Microsoft reporting directly to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. I found this phrase of the news release to be interesting (my emphasis added):

Microsoft and Skype will remain focused on their shared goal of connecting all people across all devices and accelerating both companies’ efforts to transform real-time communications for consumers and enterprise customers.

My interest was not only in the “across all devices”, which has been a large part of Skype’s goal for some time… but also in the use of “real-time communications”. For a while that was a phrase…

To I think no one’s real surprise, the European Union today gave the go-ahead to Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype. Given that the US Federal Trade Commission okayed the deal back in June, there should be no further barriers to the deal. Microsoft issued a very short statement:

We’re pleased that the European Commission has approved Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype. This is an important milestone, as we’ve now received clearance from both the United States and the European Union. We look forward to completing soon the final steps needed to close the acquisition, bringing together the employees of Microsoft and Skype, and creating new opportunities for people to communicate and collaborate around the world.

Jim Courtney took a look at the actual text of the EU ruling and in his post dissects how the commission viewed the consumer versus enterprise space with regard to competion – and how it reached the conclusion that it would be okay for Microsoft to acquire Skype.

For the sake of my friends working at Skype who have been hanging in an uncomfortable limbo while all this gets sorted out, I do hope that the acquisition can now proceed quickly. As Mary-Jo Foley notes, Microsoft has…

Given that last week I received two more phone calls from people looking to speak with Skype, I was very pleased to learn that Skype has recently started providing a support channel via Twitter – @SkypeSupport. Sure, it’s not a phone line – which probably means I’ll still be Skype’s unofficial receptionist, but at least now I have another channel to send people to in addition to Skype’s community forums.

Great to see Skype providing this channel to support customers.

P.S. Jim Courtney noted last month on his site that Skype also now has a Facebook page for customer support as well

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It was 8 years ago today that the first public beta version of Skype was released… and so began the amazing journey of a product/service that has truly disrupted the telecommunications industry. The Wikipedia page on Skype has a good record of the history, which is interesting to look back upon now.

I started using Skype sometime in early 2005 or so… working in Mitel’s Office of the CTO charged with evaluating new technology – and seeking to understand what Skype was all about. I started writing about Skype then… and still continue writing a good bit about Skype as it is certainly one of the more disruptive players in the industry. Skype today is a HUGE part of my daily life and truly is one service that is integral to my daily workflow and life online.

Skype’s blog post today, of course, focuses on their current fixation on video calls… even including the strange text (my emphasis added):

What started off as a little idea to connect the world over video calls has turned into something so much more, and we believe this is making a huge difference in making the world feel smaller and a lot more connected.

…

Are you a Mac OS X user trying to learn to live with the new Skype 5.x user interface? Would you like to learn some great shortcuts for working faster with Skype 5?

While the Skype 5.x interface has certainly come under fire from many folks (including me), the reality is that it is the direction Skype is going forward with and so to a certain degree we who want to continue to use Skype have to either learn to live with the new UI – or revert back to Skype 2.8 while realizing we won’t get any new features.

Recently my corporate laptop was upgraded to a brand new MacBook Pro and in the process I decided to finally make the jump over to Skype 5.2. In doing so, I started hunting around for ways to work even faster with the user interface. Thankfully, the folks at Skype came out with this great list of 12 tips:

Skype 5.2 tricks and tips

It turned out I knew most of them (or other ways to do them), but the one I have found very useful was the three-finger swipe on the trackpad to move up or down between conversations.…

Skype is very excited about rolling out new emoticons today… but continuing their fragmented product strategy, these new emoticons are Windows-only. So while on a Windows system they may look like (image from Skype’s blog post):

What they look like on my Mac is this:

C’mon Skype… would it have killed you to make this available in a simultaneous Mac release?

I don’t personally really care about access to these emoticons… my life will not be any better or worse based on whether or not I can use these emoticons (although I do see places where I could use them).

The point is that Skype once again continues to roll out features that work on one operating system but not on others.

Personally, I’d love to see Skype get to a point where it could be like Mozilla Firefox (or Voxeo’s Prophecy) where a new release comes out across all operating systems.

Let’s break the silos, Skype… and provide a more consistent user experience across ALL platforms!

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Three+ weeks ago on June 24th, we were all buzzing about the Skype for iPad app that was rumored. I linked to a video from MacRumors which looked quite cool. There were numerous posts saying that the Skype for iPad app was “imminent” in the Apple AppStore. Others said it was coming the next Tuesday (3 weeks ago tomorrow).

And after all the buzz… where is it?

Nowhere.

At least, it’s not in the AppStore, as of just a couple of minutes ago.

Where is the hang-up, one wonders… delays on Apple’s end? on Skype’s end? Where?

Regardless, the net of it is that we iPad users are all left out here… wondering…

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UPDATE: I’ve had multiple confirmations that this rumor about Skype for iPad is true… and CNET is running a story with screenshots that indicates Skype for iPad will be available in the AppStore on Tuesday.

UPDATE #2: There are a number of other stories now appearing up on Techmeme confirming the rumor.

If this video, reported by MacRumors, is true, this would truly ROCK! I hardly ever use Skype on my iPad2, because the iPhone app just doesn’t work all that well on the iPad.

When is this coming, Skype? We want it! 🙂

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Over the past couple of weeks, those of us watching Skype have become increasingly puzzled by the whack of terminations of senior executives at Skype. David Gurlé, a very public face of Skype, was perhaps the most prominent departure for those of us in the VoIP/telecom space, but the list includes a good number of prominent folks (source:Skype Journal):

• David Gurlé, VP and General Manager of Skype for Business
• Doug Bewsher, Chief Marketing Officer
• Anne Gillespie, Global HR Director
• Russ Shaw, VP and General Manager (focused on telecom)
• Don Albert, VP and General Manager for Americas and Advertising
• Christopher Dean, Head of Consumer Market Business Development
• Ramu Sunkara, Executive VP for Carrier Relations for Qik
• Allyson Campa, Senior VP for Marketing for Qik

Why? And why now?

Phil Wolff over at Skype Journal started writing about the issue last week and is out today with a longer post today, “Why did Skype fire 8 execs? Why them? Why now?“, where he dives into potential reasons at great depth.

His primary suggestion is “Microsoft has better teams/talent in those departments” although he also has an interesting theory around a potential for buy-back of stock by investors.

Business Week also…