Microsoft shutting down Skype in May

Microsoft has announced that it will shut down its video calling service, Skype, in May of this year. The company acquired Skype for $8.5 billion in 2011, and the platform had profoundly changed the way people communicated online. This move marks the end of an era and reflects a shift in Microsoft's overall strategic direction.

Microsoft stated that it will transfer some of Skype's services to Microsoft Teams, its flagship video conferencing and team collaboration platform. Skype users will be able to log into Teams using their existing accounts, enabling a smooth service transition. Microsoft has prioritized Teams for years, and this integration of the Skype brand also reflects the company's desire to streamline its main communication applications in response to increasingly fierce market competition.

Skype was founded in 2003 in Tallinn, Estonia, by a group of engineers and was a pioneer in making calls over the internet rather than traditional phone lines. It relies on VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) technology, which converts audio into digital signals for online transmission. After online retailer eBay acquired Skype in 2005, the service added video calling capabilities, further expanding its utility.

Barbara Larson, a management professor at Northeastern University, stated, "You no longer had to be a senior manager at a Fortune 500 company to have high-quality video calls with other people. Skype brought people around the world closer together." She specializes in the history of virtual and remote work. Skype's emergence made it possible to connect with distant colleagues, bypassing expensive international long-distance calls, which benefited not only startups but also people outside the business world.

Professor Larson also mentioned, "You could suddenly have long, frequent calls, and those calls were either free or very inexpensive." As with other new platforms, scammers also took advantage of Skype. By the time Microsoft acquired Skype from eBay in 2011, then-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said at an event announcing the merger plans that Skype had about 170 million users worldwide. "The Skype brand has become a verb, almost synonymous with video and voice communications," Ballmer said at the time.

In 2017, the newly installed U.S. President Donald Trump's administration used Skype to answer questions from reporters far from the White House press briefing room, at a time when Skype was still considered a symbol of high technology. A month later, Microsoft launched Teams, seeking to catch up with the growing demand for workplace chat services sparked by emerging competitor Slack Technologies. During the COVID-19 pandemic, as companies scrambled to switch to remote work and even families and friends sought new virtual gathering tools, Slack and Teams, as well as newer video platforms like Zoom, experienced explosive growth. By then, Skype had begun to decline, but it paved the way for strengthening remote connections between people.

Professor Larson concluded, "Higher-quality media really can deepen relationships and allow people to better solve complex problems. Suddenly, anyone with a good internet connection could use it. That’s really where Skype was revolutionary."