I'm repeatedly impressed by Andreessen Horowitz. Every person I've met on their team rocks, and now we're starting to see how their investment thesis is pannin

I'm repeatedly impressed by Andreessen Horowitz. Every person I've met on their team rocks, and now we're starting to see how their investment thesis is panning out. re: Microsoft + Skype: Microsoft knows how to make a ton of money. Microsoft is looking at an explosion of CPU cores on desktop computers. What are we going to be using those cores for? Embarrassingly parallel problems like 3D rendering, OS eye candy and video processing and compression. Multi user HD video chat is going to be happening really soon for really cheap. That's quite disruptive. (See Telepresence systems) [1] The more peer to peer nodes that are added to the Skype network, the better the product. If Windows ships a Skype client turned on by default with every OS and copy of Office it sells... that peer to peer network starts to look like BitTorrent in size. Cisco currently charges $300k for a telepresence room. Their 37" telepresence system runs about $50k last I checked. Skype chats just got blessed as an enterprise system. There's a _lot_ of money to be made here. My nieces and nephews are in 3 different countries and about 6 different states. Every night, they live on Skype, and video chat for free. When I grew up in Central America in the 70's, a phone call to the US was $3/min. Microsoft no longer has government oversight from the anti-trust settlement... Things might just get interesting. ref: [1] http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps7060/index.html http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps7060/index.html