is seen by analysts as an aggressive move to challenge Google, Facebook and others for the hearts, minds and wallets of online users. Some industry watchers say Microsoft actually had technology in its portfolio to compete with Skype on many fronts, but that buying the company gives Microsoft lots of customers fast. The combination of the Skype buyout and advances on the Windows Phone 7 front also gives .

The big Interop 2011 show could almost have been called the given that it served as one of the first significant exhibitions of OpenFlow switches and controllers, including those shown off in a lab at the event. The software-defined networking technology is designed to enable users to define flows and determine what paths those flows take through a network, regardless of the underlying hardware. OpenFlow stems from an project borne of a six-year research collaboration between Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley.

Google launched , its browser-turned-operating system, and alternative to Windows, Mac OS and Linux (through Chrome OS technically sits on a stripped-down version of Linux. By putting most of a user's apps and data on the Web with some offline capabilities, Chrome OS presents a "stateless" model that the company believes will make it easier to use and manage computers. The .