In an interview at Microsoft’s Silicon Valley headquarters, the company’s Corporate Vice President Dan’l Lewin, who works as the firm’s envoy to the Valley, answered questions before the Silicon Valley Association for Startup Entrepreneurs. The Wall Street Journal hasan edited transcript of the event. What follows are the important points from his answers: Microsoft doesn’t know what it is going to do with Skype. Or, at least, the company hasn’t told Lewin, whose answer to the question was wordy, incoherent, and generally dull....

Microsoft’s $68.7B splurgeon Activision Blizzard is huge news for gaming, but the company has also pointed to the impact on another market: themetaverse. In a press release announcing the plan, the Xbox owner said the deal will “provide building blocks” for the metaverse.Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chairman and CEO, reiterated the point in a letter to shareholders: Gaming has been key toMicrosoftsince our earliest days as a company. Today, it’s the largest and fastest-growing form of entertainment, and as the digital and physical worlds come together, it will play a critical role in the development of metaverse platforms....

TNW Quick Hit: Microsoft’s answer to Google’s popular StreetView product is finally making thehop across the pond, having today begun the work of mapping the great mass that is Europe. Cars equipped with cameras began rolling in London, and will expand to other locations in short order. Microsoft’s goal with Streetside is smaller than Google’s with its StreetView, focusing on large urban centers, and not back roads. This will help Microsoft curtail costs, and also complete its mapping more quickly....

Microsoft’s year-old “Really?” Windows Phone adverts, which show various smartphone owners getting into trouble , have been made the focus of a lawsuit from novelty gift firmCellrderm, which accuses the Redmond-based company and advertising agency Crispin Porter & Bogusky of copying its ad campaign. The lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, suggests Microsoft and Crispin Porter & Bogusky deliberatly leveraged the idea to show a man drop his smartphone in a urinal and also to include a executive type who ignores sexual advances from his frustrated wife....

We don’t usually go full-nerd here at TNW, but today is an exception. Yesterday on TechNet, Microsoftposted a videothat shows off a robot it built to help the company test the coming Surface 2.0. In other words, it spent oodles of money and time building something that mimics, wait for it, hands. We frankly don’t want to contemplate how much cash Microsoft employed to build paTTy, the robot’s name, but it certainly seems pretty proud of what it built (Is this Jack’s house?...