Keeping me company

Keeping me company: Great episode of This Week in Tech hosted by Leo Laporte, Loic Le Meur, Joshua Topolsky, Owen JJ Stone and Ryan Block . Kept me company on my train journey back home.

Far too much

Far too much: Reuters writes:

Microsoft Corp’s move to buy money-losing Internet phone service Skype for $8.5 billion was immediately skewered by critics and investors, who questioned the logic of the deal and suggested the software giant is paying far too much.

$8.5 billion is a lot of money for a company that does not make a profit, net loss of $7 million last year. From the looks of it they are doing it for the technology and not the user base and Microsoft spends eight times as much on R&D;than Apple. I use Skype a lot, I just hope I don’t have to create a Windows Live Id!

The AOL fiasco

Eric D Snider remarks: The transition was going to be arduous and complicated. This was particularly true for the people who write AOL’s press releases, who had to work overtime issuing statements with business terms like “restructuring” (which means firing people), “streamlining” (which also means firing people), “re-branding” (which means making people forget all the negative associations they have with AOL and Arianna Huffington), and “synergy” (which doesn’t mean anything). Engadget part of the AOL network is one of my favourate tech blogs, unfortunately almost everyone working there has resigned.