But why buy Skype to achieve all this? After all, had the start-up gone public, it would no doubt have been keen to work with Microsoft on these and other offerings to drum up revenue. Perhaps the answer is that Microsoft desperately wants to be seen as a place that is home to cool consumer technologies and hopes that owning Skype outright will give it more credibility as a hive of edgy innovation. The snag is that the firm has fallen so far behind the likes of Google and Apple in the consumer arena that its fall from grace there may well be irrevocable.