In many ways it was perhaps the biggest (scoop) story of my life – Microsoft buying Skype for $8.5 billion. In fact, it was an end to a story that had been a major part of my working life in the 21st century. But when you look at 2011, there aren’t too many people dwelling on that story. Not even me! I guess in a year where AT&T-T-Mobile deal was announced and scrapped and Steve Jobs passed away and Kindle became the tablet to watch, it is hard to remember that Microsoft bet on Skype.
Andy Abramson, a friend laments that there is a lot less blogging about VoIP & communication, something I would blog quite often. I would say, that is not the case. The world moves to newer and more interesting things much faster than it used because we amidst a sea change in technologies, platforms and modalities. I have maintained my interest in many aspect of technologies, but the focus for me, always has been about innovation and its business impact. And that is how I think/write/work.
Gabe Rivera put out his list of Techmeme’s biggest stories of 2011 (as measured by height) and there were two stories of mine that made the cut — at #6 Guess who else wanted to buy Motorola and at the #7 spot, In AT&T & T-Mobile merger, everybody loses.
And I found you and your great work when Skype had that massive outage and you wrote about how customers reported it in August 2007.
Thanks Valeria
Well Om! Most of use were shocked to see that the Redmond giant could actually buy Skype for that much amount. I and analysts are still in deep thought. But I would like to thank you for reporting that story. Plus, many congrats that your story became one of the top 25 stories on Techmeme! 🙂