Microsoft announced that Skype, the video calling service that had millions of users, will be shutting down in May. Skype was once one of the most popular apps in the world because it allowed people to talk to each other via video calls around the globe for free. It wasn’t the first or only company to offer the service, but by allowing the public to make free computer-to-computer calls, it became one of the most widely used platforms. First launched in 2003, Skype was acquired by tech giant Microsoft in 2011 for $8.5 billion, its largest acquisition ever at the time.
As Microsoft once pointed out, Skype was also integrated with other company products like Xbox and Windows devices. Technology industry commentator Om Malik called it one of the key applications of the modern web in December 2010, when it suffered a two-day global outage.
But what happened? When Microsoft bought Skype, the app had been downloaded 1 billion times and had hundreds of millions of users. But as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger grew in popularity, Skype was fading. In 2017, Microsoft redesigned Skype with some features that looked a lot like rival Snapchat. But users weren’t happy with the changes. In June 2021, speculation continued that this was the beginning of the end for Skype. After about 4 years, it turned out that these speculations were true as May 2025 marks the end of the Skype era.