The name once synonymous with video calls is calling it quits as Microsoft announces that Skype will be shutting down starting in May, reports CNN.
By the time that Microsoft purchased the company in 2011 for US$8.5 billion in cash – its largest acquisition at the time – Skype had already reached the level of cultural cachet where a brand name becomes a verb.
In the 14 years since, Wired editor Jeremy White calculated, that has worked out to around US$1.6 million a day – a pretty penny for a service that peaked in 2016 with around 300 million daily active users worldwide. Its popularity soon faded as a spate of competitors entered the video calling market, including Microsoft’s own Teams.
Jeff Teper, president of Microsoft 365 collaborative apps and platforms praised Skype in a blog post as “an integral part of shaping modern communications and supporting countless meaningful moments” before pivoting to what its end means for the company’s other video calling service. “We’re excited about the new opportunities that Teams brings and are committed to helping you stay connected in new and meaningful ways.”
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If you are one of the 36 million daily users still on Skype, don’t panic. The service won’t be shut down immediately. You have 10 weeks to migrate your chats and contacts over to a free version of Teams for consumers or you can use the app’s export tool to download your data straight to your device.
If you do make the switch to Teams, you can still stay in touch with your contacts on Skype during the migration period, as messages sent from Teams will be delivered to Skype. But the ability to make domestic or international calls – services once synonymous with Skype – will end on 5 May.
Launched in Estonia in 2003, Skype quickly took off as a way to make free calls worldwide at a time when making such calls via traditional telephony could get pricey. E-commerce company eBay purchased Skype two years later for US$2.6 billion, a partnership that eventually floundered with eBay selling its 65-percent stake to an investor group in 2009 for US$1.9 billion. Microsoft then bought it in 2011, riding the height of its popularity in the mid-2010s, before apps like FaceTime and WhatsApp cut into its market share.
Other competitors like Zoom, Google Meet and Cisco Webex, saw a bounce during the pandemic, as did Microsoft’s Teams. Teams pulled ahead of Skype in professional settings as an integrated hub for Office 365 that also offered built-in features like threaded conversations and channels to make work easier. Teams now boasts 320 million monthly active users – and may see a small bump as some Skype users migrate over.
