Why is it every time Microsoft acquire something, others will get very uneasy?… The recent one is the acquisition of Skype. Microsoft announced its plan to acquired Skype in May last year and European Commission cleared Microsoft’s $8.5 billion acquisition in October the same year.

But others especially video or web conferencing players are not happy with the acquisition. They are worried Microsoft will make the video conferencing technology closed… proprietary to itself. Cisco especially, wants the European court to impose tougher conditions on Microsoft Corp’s acquisition on Skype. Citing example, Cisco chief executive officer John Chambers said that when the Cisco acquired Norway’s Tandberg in 2009, the EU approved the deal under the condition it stick to open standards… Cisco wants the same condition applied to Microsoft.

Analyst said the global videoconferencing market will hit US$5bil in 2015 compared with US$2.2bil in 2010. Well, let’s hope Microsoft makes Skype video conferencing an open standard and not proprietary so that other video or web conferencing players such as Polycom and Citrix will be able cross-interact with each other’s and makes all consumers happy… 😀