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This article was published on August 8, 2011

New Windows Live icons point to Skype integration


New Windows Live icons point to Skype integration

New Windows Live icons seem to paint the picture that Microsoft is set to include Skype’s video chat capabilities into its suite of consumer web services.

The icons, found by LiveSide, include ‘camera’ images similar to what Google employs in Gmail. Three colors of the same image are included, presumably for ‘available,’ ‘busy,’ and ‘away.’

Here are the icons:

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It is likely that Microsoft, which has been unusually quiet on the Windows Live front, at least from a PR perspective, for some time now, is set to unveil new upgrades for the various Live components at the upcoming BUILD conference. At that same event, Microsoft is set to release a huge number of details on Windows 8, its forthcoming operating system. It is not long stretch of the imagination that Windows Live will also have a showing.

In fact, if it doesn’t, it will be a surprise. Either Microsoft has managed to do next to nothing with Live and has thus been avoiding talking to the press, or the company is waiting. It could be that Microsoft is looking to integrate Windows Live more deeply into Windows 8.

If that is the case, it appears that Skype is set to figure largely in that future. Unless, of course, these icons are for a different video chat service, long in the making. That would just be ironic. Microsoft, after all, is only paying $8.5 billion for Skype.

We are going to have our sonar turned on for Windows Live news over the next few weeks. If you know anything, send it our way.

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