The end is near for Skype: How the once-popular video chat pioneer will be remembered

All good things come to an end.

Microsoft is pulling the plug on Skype on May 5, nearly 15 years after the tech juggernaut acquired the VoIP European provider from eBay for $8.5 billion.

Jeff Teper, president of collaborative apps and platforms at Microsoft, revealed in a Feb. 28 blog post that the company would be retiring the service in order to “streamline our free consumer communications offerings so we can more easily adapt to customer needs.”

The software, designed to “connect with the people that matter most in your life and work,” allowed users to chat via HD voice or video call with anyone in the world for free. Users could also send “text” messages through Skype.

“For a lot of people, it was the first time they had ever used a video chat software and was honestly a market leader at the time,” James Hennessy, editor at Australian news outlet Capital Brief told ABC News Australia in February. “But since then, we’re talking about the mid 2000s, it’s gone through a series of acquisitions and a real loss of its strategic lead.”

The death of Skype, like other telecommunications platforms before it, has evoked a sense of nostalgia among current and former users. A similar situation unfolded in November 2023, when Omegle founder Leif K-Brooks announced that the video chat service, which randomly paired strangers to connect, would be shutting down.

Here’s what to know about the death of Skype, including more information on why Microsoft decided to pull the plug.

What is Skype? And why is Microsoft shutting it down?

Skype is a VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol, service that enables users to make or receive audio/video calls over the internet. Skype gave users the ability to purchase a subscription or pay as they went.

“With Skype, you can have meetings and create great things with your workgroup, share a story or celebrate a birthday with friends and family, and learn a new skill or hobby with a teacher,” a description on the Microsoft website reads. “It’s free to use Skype – to send messages and have audio and video calls with groups of up to 100 people!”

The telecommunications app boasted hundreds of millions of users in its heyday, but failed to compete against other services like Zoom and Microsoft Teams.

Skype will be migrated into Teams, Microsoft’s “modern communications and collaboration hub,” just like Hotmail was in 2013.

“The timing of this shift is driven by the significant advancements and adoption of Microsoft Teams. In the past two years, the number of minutes spent in meetings by consumer users of Teams has grown 4X,” Microsoft said in an April 29 statement. “And Teams free offers many of the same core features as Skype: 1:1 calls, group calls, messaging, and file sharing, as well as enhanced features like hosting meetings, managing calendars, and building and joining communities — all for free.”

The statement continued: “By consolidating our efforts to focus on Teams, we can provide the best possible communication and collaboration experience.’

What will happen to your Skype account?

Any contacts and chats from Skype will automatically appear when users log into the free version of Teams with their Skype credentials. The “account” will continue to exist but will be folded into Teams.

Paying Skype customers with active subscriptions or Skype Credits can continue to use them after May 5 through the Skype Dial Pad, available through Skype on the web or the free version of Teams. Additional information about the transition from Skype to Team can be found here.

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Some are celebrating Skype’s retirement, others are mourning it

While some were ecstatic to learn about Skype’s retirement, others were in their feelings when they learned the news.

That being said, anecdotes and reactions about Skype’s inevitable demise have started to appear and circulate on social media in the last few days. (Even trade publication TechCrunch has spoken up.)

Here’s what users, past and present, have been saying about it:

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: ‘RIP Skype’: Users say goodbye to video chat pioneer