By: Nicholas Kolakowski, eWeek
Microsoft’s week included a peek at a Nokia Windows Phone, a cloud-services outage and the beginnings of Skype’s absorption into Microsoft. Microsoft’s week started off and ended with a promise of big future things to come. The U.S. Department of Justice approved Microsoft’s $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype. That means Redmond now faces the singular challenge of digesting Skype’s assets into its various products, including the Lync unified communications platform and Outlook, while preserving Skype’s enormous brand equity. Moreover, Microsoft has to monetize Skype in such a way that its sizable built-in audience, so used to paying little-or-nothing for VOIP (voice over IP) and video calling, doesn’t flee to a competing platform.
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