The long-awaited announcement with a termination date for Microsoft Messenger has been emailed out to the 100 million users of that service. Microsoft will be shutting down that service on 15 march 2013. Last fall, Skype’s Tony Bates announced  the folding of Messenger into Skype (see Talk to your Messenger Contacts on Skype), and basically, they’ve been waiting to roll out Skype on all the new Windows Phone configurations.

Now Microsoft is only left with two instant messaging/video/voice solutions to juggle, Skype and Lync, their enterprise grade unified communications suite. My hunch is that they will converge these two — in time — under the Skype brand, which is widely known. And which now has an additional 100 million (or more) former Messenger users.