Skype is reportedly being killed by Microsoft. A hidden string in the latest preview build of Skype states that “Skype will no longer be available” starting in May and points people to Teams.
Microsoft has not officially announced the end of Skype support, but it seems likely we only have a couple more months to use the platform, assuming anyone still relies on it.
The death of Skype has been coming for years. Microsoft shifted its priorities to Teams years ago and Skype has dwindled in usage steadily for a variety of reasons.
I underestimated how much nostalgia I have for Skype. Going through photos and stories for this post was quite emotional.
My wife, Leah, and I have been together for almost 12 years. Most of the first year of our relationship was long distance, and Skype was our main method of talking.
For the record, I’m sad that Skype is going away. My marriage is great. I confess the headline is purposefully ambiguous.
I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for Skype. I know there were other platforms my wife and I could have used, but the reality is that we did use Skype.
For the better part of a year, each time I heard the famous Skype ring, I knew Leah was on the other end of the phone.
Skype dates
My wife and I dated long distance for the majority of the first year of our relationship. Since I was on the east coast of the United States and Leah was in the UK, there was a sizeable time difference.
But we made a schedule that worked. I would stay up to chat with Leah after she got off work and she would call me before university. We also set aside time for Skype dates.
This was back before the days of watch parties on Netflix or simple synchronized streaming. I would take a webcam and point it at the TV so Leah and I could watch the movie “side by side.”
Occasionally, I would playfully put on a puppet show, as shown above. The Prince of Egypt and Pokémon are among my favorite things, so it’s only natural for both to appear during a date.
Skype was an easy choice when we decided to stay in touch. Between the two of us, we used devices running at least three different operating systems, which limited our options. Skype was free and available on our phones and computers.
Over the years, Skype remained our app of choice. The first time I met my wife’s parents and siblings was over Skype.
I remember the first time I got a Kinect camera for the Xbox One and how excited I was to chat with a room of people. Smartphone cameras had narrow fields of view back then, so group conversations were difficult.
When I moved to the UK, Skype was still the easiest way to talk with my parents. But over time we shifted to WhatsApp and other platforms.
My wife has a large family, which made the pandemic especially difficult. We had many Zoom calls during that time. I remember joking at the time about how we had moved to Zoom rather than use Skype.
But Zoom was easy to use because you could just share a link and connect. By the time Microsoft added similar functionality to Skype, we had already switched.
What happened to Skype?
Microsoft purchased Skype in 2013 for more than $8.5 billion. At the time, that was the largest purchase in Microsoft history.
Back then, Skype was an immensely popular platform for video calls and other forms of communication.
Microsoft said that Skype was “here to stay” back in 2021, but plans change. Between that statement being made and now, we’ve seen a global pandemic wrap up, people migrate to Zoom, WhatsApp, and other platforms en masse, and Microsoft shift its efforts to Microsoft Teams.
The mismanagement of Skype should be studied in business schools. The platform had over 330 million users at one point. The world then shifted to a point where people are in constant communication with each other and video calls are ubiquitous.
So, how did a platform with a massive global reach lose users when demand for its primary feature goes up? There were several factors:
- Microsoft was slow to modernize Skype.
- The desktop Skype app was remade several times but was never as good as it should have been.
- Skype did not work well on phones and lost users to more reliable platforms.
- Competing apps were quick to fill the void, such as Zoom becoming a dominant platform during the pandemic.
- Microsoft prioritised Teams over Skype.
There were other reasons Skype failed. You could teach entire classes on how Microsoft took the platform and ran it into the ground.
To be honest, I’m not sure Microsoft mourns the death of Skype. Teams has hundreds of millions of users, and most importantly, Teams has a path to monetization.
Skype for Business was common in enterprise environments, but Teams is on a whole other level. I don’t remember Microsoft and Slack feuding over Skype for Business the way they war over Teams vs. Slack.
