Om Malik writes about MSN providing VoiP features and gearing to compete with Skype. Excerpts with edits and my comments added:
Microsoft does a lot of things, most of them are either poor or average at best. Their products have a feeling of feature creep to it. Microsoft Outlook perhaps is the only product they get right (on surface, but miss out on security).The same more-is-better approach comes out in their yet another attempt to reinvent MSN Messenger software. Microsft says MSN is more VoIP friendly, and will allow people to make phone calls just like Skype. The new MSN lets you make PC2PC video calls, like Apple’s iChat. MSN IM client seems to have finally caught up with Apple’s iChat, though comparing itself to Skype looks cool.Skype with its proprietary technology is an Internet Voice client that does some IM, while MSN is an IM client that is pretending to do voice, along with hotmail e-mail service and MSN Spaces, their lukewarm blogging tool..Robin Kellet, product manager for MSN Messenger in Europe, told the Wall Street Journal, that they have ripped out "the old architecture and put a new one in," which means now the "software can now make calls through corporate firewalls that would normally block Internet calls." Om is right when he says he would like to know what technology they are using? Will there be a PC2PSTN phone service? Does it use SIP? .Om writes , he still likes their enterprise VoIP initiative!.
My take: Microsoft has enhanced the quality of their MSN Messenger voice communications feature and made it easier to get through corporate firewalls. Skype's runaway success will lead to every major internet player moving to offer services into the free VoiP space. We had been covering Microsoft's impressive forays in the emerging consumer electronics sector and the general advances or the lack of it that that microsft has made in the recent past. One comforting thought is that despite criticisms - microsft is not shy of trying - nevermind poor offtakes like msnspace.
Category : Microsoft
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