The colossal mistakes Microsoft made leading to Skype’s demise
Microsoft is shutting down Skype in May, fourteen years after buying the VoIP service, with Teams serving as Microsoft’s own successor.
The Windows maker will shut down Skype, the app that popularized Voice over IP (VoIP) calling, on May 5. After the cut-off date, the service will stop working and you’ll no longer be able to keep in touch with your Skype friends. Calling domestic or international numbers will also no longer be possible.
The writing has been on the wall: In December 2024, Microsoft stopped selling Skype phone numbers and credits to make calls, encouraging users to switch to monthly subscriptions or take advantage of free Skype-to-Skype calls instead.
The biggest problem with Skype’s demise is that no other consumer service lets you call international landlines for cheap, which was a great way to call distant relatives from another country. Is anyone surprised that Microsoft is shutting down Skype?
Microsoft to shut down Skype on May 5
Microsoft says it will redirect Skype users to the free version of Teams. According to Microsoft, the 320 million monthly Teams users surpass Skype’s user base. Existing Skype users who migrate to Teams will have their Skype message history, group chats and contacts available in Teams. Microsoft will also provide a tool to export Skype data, including photos and conversation history.
”Skype users will be in control, they’ll have the choice,” Jeff Teper, president of Microsoft 365 collaborative apps and platforms, told The Verge. “They can migrate their conversation history and their contacts out and move on if they want, or they can migrate to Teams.”
However, if you move to Teams, you’ll lose a major Skype feature: the ability to call domestic or international numbers or people’s cellphones. “Part of the reason is we look at the usage and the trends, and this functionality was great at the time when voice over IP (VoIP) wasn’t available and mobile data plans were very expensive,” explains Fulay. “If we look at the future, that’s not a thing we want to be in.”
Existing Skype credits and subscriptions will continue to function inside Skype and Teams until the current billing period ends. If you purchased a Skype number, you’ll need to port it to another provider. If you’d like to delete your Skype account permanently, our tutorial shows you how to do it.
The writing has been on the wall
This doesn’t surprise me at all. In fact, I expected Skype to shut down much sooner. When was the last time you received an important message or a Skype call from someone from your social circle? Thought so… Microsoft has left Skype languishing for years, trying to modernize the apps by copying features from competitors. In 2017, for example, Microsoft rolled out a Skype update featuring Highlights, a Snapchat-inspired feature that was so badly received it got pulled.
An endless stream of tweaks, changes, and rollbacks continued for some time until updates were few and far between. Skype just wasn’t relevant anymore as services like WhatsApp, FaceTime, and Facebook Messenger grew in popularity. Skype’s make-or-break moment was the pandemic.
As the world stopped during the COVID-19 pandemic, video calling became the next killer app. Microsoft had a gold mine opportunity during the pandemic but failed to seize it as people flocked to Zoom.
You know something’s wrong when your favorite VoIP app becomes the subject of ridicule on late-night talk shows, like when John Oliver said on the Last Week Tonight show: “What happened, Skype? You had it, and you lost it. We used to use Skype as a verb to mean to video call someone rather than what it means now to completely f*** up the easiest opportunity imaginable.”
Colossal Skype mistakes Microsoft made
Microsoft snapped up Skype for $8.5 billion in 2011, a massive acquisition in today’s dollars, let alone 14 years ago. The real-time video and voice communications apps were founded and first released in August 2003. eBay acquired Skype for $2.6 billion in September 2005, but a year later, a group of investors bought 65% of Skype from eBay for $1.9 billion and then sold it to Microsoft.
Microsoft had big plans for Skype. It used the service to replace Windows Live Messenger and integrated it into Xbox, Windows, Office,and more. It also released native Skype apps for iOS, Android, and Linux. I regularly used Skype until the mid-2000s, but I won’t miss it.
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