Actually, I had a major problem with that as well, especially this sentence: "He concluded that one of Skype's key assets -- its peer-to-peer technology -- was a mismatch for Google, which worked on the newer paradigm of cloud computing."
I think the underlying problem is voice-recognition technology. I read somewhere (sorry, no link right now) that Google is using Google voice to hone in on their voice recognition technology, which we are now starting to see in Android. P2P kind of side-steps the Google servers (or, to phrase it more appropriately, avoids the MITM), thereby not providing any real use to them.
Remember, Google's business model is data. Control, collection, mining of lots and lots of data. P2P just doesn't facilitate that, so that's why Google chose to reject it.
I think the underlying problem is voice-recognition technology. I read somewhere (sorry, no link right now) that Google is using Google voice to hone in on their voice recognition technology, which we are now starting to see in Android. P2P kind of side-steps the Google servers (or, to phrase it more appropriately, avoids the MITM), thereby not providing any real use to them.
Remember, Google's business model is data. Control, collection, mining of lots and lots of data. P2P just doesn't facilitate that, so that's why Google chose to reject it.