Microsoft acquires Ray Ozzie’s Talko

Microsoft today announced that it has acquired Ray Ozzie’s latest startup Talko, a mobile app that provides conferencing and telephony services. While Talko’s team is now a part of Microsoft, Ozzie is not coming back. Ozzie spent five years at Microsoft ascending to founder and former CEO Bill Gates’ role as chief software architect. While Ray Ozzie won’t be re-joining Microsoft, he has no immediate plans. “I remain a builder, and I love helping great product teams have broad impact with their work,” says Ozzie in an email to ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley. “Looking forward to figuring out what’s next.”

Talko employees will be joining the Skype team at Microsoft, and they will be working on Skype for Business, as well Skype.Talko works by allowing consumers and businesses to collaborate with live voice communications.

Microsoft’s Gurdeep Singh Pall said:

I am pleased to announce today that Microsoft has acquired technology from Talko, maker of an innovative mobile app for on-the-go business communications. As part of the agreement, Talko employees will join the Skype team. Together, the new technology and talent will help us deliver great new features and capabilities in both Skype and Skype for Business.

Talko announced the acquisition on its website:

Today we’re announcing that Talko’s been acquired by Microsoft to help fuel future innovation in Skype and Skype for Business.

As part of the Skype team, we’ll leverage Talko’s technology and the many things we’ve learned during its design and development. We’ll strive to deliver the best of our product’s innovations far more broadly than on our current path.

We deeply appreciate the commitment that so many of you made in betting on Talko. You invested your time and your reputation to convince your friends and co-workers to use the product with you.

From each of us – thank you, so very much.

Talko will shutdown by March 2016 and the users will be able to export all their past Talko conversations.