Skype In Or Out: The Most Expensive VOIP Call In History

So Microsoft’s buying Skype for $8.5 billion?

Man, time flies.  I remember when eBay bought Skype for, well, wasn’t it like $2.5B?

But, that was in the Jurassic era, pre-Facebook, whom, by the way, Om Malik pronounces the winner of Microsoft’s newfound acquisition.

His reasoning?  Facebook gets to keep Skype away from Google and gets access to the Skype assets through Microsoft’s deal.

But Nokia also benefits after Microsoft’s recent deal with them to put Windows Mobile 7 into Nokia smartphones as their OS of choice moving forward.

Of course, you also will now see Skype moving into the X-Box, Kinect, Sharepoint, Outlook…the list goes on.

Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb points out, though, that Mac Fanboys will likely continue to get the short end of the Skype stick, as “neglect of the Mac version has always been an issue.”

He points out that Skype for Mac has been “several versions behind the Windows version for years” and lags in features, and that it would be hard to imagine that changing with this deal.

Regardless, one would hope the folks in Redmond just don’t treat Skype like the red-headed stepchild it seemed to be at e-Bay.

Considering its Microsoft’s most expensive acquisition ever (aQuantive went for $6B in 2007), I would think they’d want to make the most of it, although keeping all that talent around will require some nice velvety handcuffs.

$8.5B, though — that’s got to be the single most expensive VOIP call in the history of the planet!