Skype, a video calling service that Microsoft purchased for $8.5 billion in 2011 and that contributed to a revolution in online communication, is shutting down.
The IT behemoth announced on Friday that it will discontinue Skype in May and move some of its offerings to Microsoft Teams, its premier platform for collaboration apps and video conferencing.
Users of Skype will be able to access Teams using their current login credentials.
Teams has long been Microsoft’s top priority over Skype, and the company’s decision to discontinue the name is indicative of its aim to simplify its primary communications software in the face of numerous rivals.
Skype was the first company to use the internet for phone calls rather than landlines. It was founded in 2003 by a group of technologists in Tallinn, Estonia.
The technology that transformed audio into a digital signal that could be sent over the internet was called voice over internet protocol, or VOIP.
Following its 2005 acquisition by online retailer eBay, Skype introduced video calls.
Laptops 1000“You no longer needed to be a Fortune 500 company senior manager to have a good quality video call with someone else,” said Barbara Larson, a Northeastern University management professor who specializes in the history of remote and virtual work.
“It helped many people from all over the world get closer.”
“You could suddenly have long calls, frequent calls, that were either free or very inexpensive,” Larson said.
Like other new platforms, scammers also took advantage of Skype’s ability to connect with distant coworkers without paying for expensive international phone calls.
By 2011, when Microsoft acquired it from eBay, Skype had approximately 170 million users worldwide. According to then-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who stated at an event announcing the planned merger, “the Skype brand has become a verb, nearly synonymous with video and voice communications.”
When President Donald Trump’s administration used Skype to answer questions from reporters outside the White House press briefing room in 2017, it was still seen as high-tech.
A month later, Microsoft introduced Teams to meet the increasing demand for office chat services brought on by Slack Technologies, a startup competitor.
During the COVID-19 epidemic, Slack, Teams, and more recent video platforms like Zoom experienced rapid development as businesses rushed to switch to remote work and even families and friends searched for new resources for online meetings.
Although Skype was already declining by that point, it had helped to improve the relationships that individuals could establish from a distance.
“People can develop deeper relationships and solve complex problems much more effectively when exposed to higher-quality media,” Larson said.
Anyone with a good internet connection may now access this. That was Skype’s true revolutionary role.
