Once hailed as a technology of the future, the video calling and messaging service Skype officially shut down on Monday, May 5, after 22 years in operation.
Microsoft , which has owned Skype for 14 years, announced in February that it was planning to discontinue the service.
"To simplify our free consumer communication services and better align with customer requirements, we plan to discontinue Skype in May 2025. We aim to concentrate on Microsoft Teams (free)—our advanced platform for communication and collaboration," stated Jeff Teper, President of Collaborative Apps and Platforms at Microsoft. said at the time.
Microsoft opted to discontinue Skype in order to concentrate its efforts on advancing its Microsoft Teams application, which encompasses all the features offered by Skype along with additional capabilities. In connection with this changeover, Microsoft declared that it would provide a free edition of Teams to everyone who formerly used Skype.
Users can enjoy several key functionalities with Teams similar to those available in Skype, including individual video calls, group discussions, chat messages, and document exchange," explained Teper. "Moreover, Teams provides advanced capabilities such as organizing conferences, overseeing schedules, and forming or participating in groups at no cost.
Teper also stated that Teams has established a presence in the video conferencing market and said the product is currently used by “hundreds of millions” of people to connect with others at home, school, and work. He also emphasized that “the number of minutes spent in meetings by consumer users of Teams” has quadrupled in the last two years.
Skype was created in 2003 by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis as a service to make calls over the internet. Over the years, it evolved into a free video call service and messaging application. Reports show At its height, more than 300 million individuals utilized Skype. Nevertheless, over time, Skype's user base declined as customers turned to competing services like WhatsApp and Slack for their communication needs.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, when video conferencing tools emerged as essential means of staying connected, many individuals chose platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams instead of Skype. As a result, by 2020, the user base of Skype had decreased to around 40 million. The decline persisted; come 2023, statistics showed that just about 36 million people still used Skype. reports .