After 22 years on the market, Microsoft's Skype communication platform will stop working from May 5 to switch to Teams.
On the dedicated page for Skype, Microsoft posted a farewell notice and suggested that users switch to the free version of Teams using their Skype login information. "Your chats and contacts will always be available. Your favorite features on Skype, like free calling and messaging, or new functions like meetings and communities, are all available on Teams," the notice said.
Skype was created by a team of Niklas Zennström, Janus Friis and four Estonian developers, and was first released in August 2003. eBay then bought it in September 2005 for $2.6 billion before Microsoft acquired it in 2011 for $8.5 billion - a price that was considered expensive 14 years ago.
After a period of strong growth in the beginning, Skype gradually lost steam in the face of great competition from Zoom, WhatsApp, FaceTime, and Discord - platforms with more beautiful interfaces, optimized for the cloud, and many outstanding functions. According to Microsoft, the application has 30 million monthly users, one-tenth of its peak.
Microsoft introduced Teams in 2017, which was considered a sad milestone for Skype. With the feature of combining chat, meetings, file sharing, calendaring, and security into a software package, Teams gradually replaced the role of the old application. Whenever there was a new feature, Teams would be the priority product instead of Skype.
"By killing Skype, Microsoft is simplifying its product portfolio, cutting costs, and forcing everyone to use the official Teams app. It may sound harsh, but it's a strategic reality for a major tech company," MakeUseOf commented.
When Skype is shut down, users can archive their conversations by going to Skype's Export Chat History and Files page, going to Sign In > Select Data > Submit Request. Skype will collect the data and compress it into a zip file for download, which may take a few minutes. The data will be available until January 2026.
Skype is currently available in the Microsoft Store and is rated 4.9/5 stars. Meanwhile, Teams is rated 2.9/5 stars with many critical comments.
(according to Microsoft, MakeUseOf)