Global
Equities analyst Trip Chowdry has a different take.
If Microsoft
doesn't manage to kill Skype with its classic internal politics-look how
Hotmail, Danger and Aquantive suffered from lack of investment-they still have
a challenge in maintaining and growing an old-fashioned P2P network in an era
defined by cloud computing.
P2P, Chowdy
noted, lacks the collective intelligence capabilities that characterize cloud
computing.
"From a
pure technology point of view, I would say Skype is the past and Google Voice
is the future," Chowdry told eWEEK. "If I ask you what the next
things you can see in Skype I can bet that neither you know, neither I know,
and neither Microsoft knows because there is no step beyond what you see right
now because of the P2P architectural limitation."
Conversely,
Google Voice's construction as a Web platform allows it to dovetail nicely with
the rest of Google's products. This gives Google Voice an advantage of
scalability even as it lacks Skype's massive user base.
Privately,
Google executives feel the same. Though no Google executive would discuss the
purchase on the record at Google I/O last week, most told eWEEK off the record that
they felt Microsoft paid a lot of money for Skype with no guarantee of getting
the money back.
Ironically,
Google seriously gunned for Skype years ago. There were talks that Google and
Facebook were talking with Skype again recently, yet most feel Google was
simply trying to drive up the price for Microsoft or Facebook.
"It is
likely that Google gamed Microsoft to a higher price, that would be consistent
with the firm's personality," said analyst Rob Enderle, who consults with
Microsoft. "Recall they did something similar with the spectrum auction a
while back."
"The risk,
however, is if Microsoft pulls off convergence, and Microsoft has been working
on that for over a decade now so has a lot of stuff already in the hopper, they
could define the next technology wave."
Google doesn't
seem too concerned with that prospect.
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