Why's it silly? He's buying a commodity business (thats what VOIP is) for 32x earnings.

There's a reason M&A is often referred to as a winner's curse -- because winning the bidding typically means overpaying. The synergies execs often talk about almost -always- fail to be realized.

Shareholders of Microsoft would have been much better off if the company just bought back $8.5bn in stock. A dividend would have been out of the question due to tax repatriation issues.