I still remember that I am switching to Skype for my in-game comes in the mid-00s. It was partly this because I was actually playing with one or two friends at a time, and because I used it to call my girlfriend. This helped me move beyond the MSN Messenger, where I had met girlfriend, and I remember this call as a revolutionary experience in quality. The person present at the other end simply looked so clear that I used to use it so clear than other VoIP software.
I would eventually start using Teampek while playing with large groups, and came for prominence in the 2010s. But I still used Skype for individual calls for relatives, and recently how I interacted with my doctor.
So this is a moment of a bitwatch where after 20 years again, by re -use, I have finally made my last Skype call. Microsoft is shutting down Skype this week and most of the millions of users have moved to other platforms once again.
it’s time to say goodbye.
Walking on the ground
Skype started life as a small project for the collection of Nordic and Baltic Developers, who attacked the golden idea of using Peer to reduce the costs of voice calls to Peer to Peer to Peer Technology (such as developers, Kaja’s previous project). For more than two years from launching Skype in 2003, eBay bought the original company for $ 2.5 billion.
The inexpensive, and then free voice calls were a revelation at that time, making it possible to enjoy clear and effective voice communication when the landline and mobile phones were prohibitedly expensive; Especially those of us who were quite young, they are not earning whatever big money we are earning today.
But when eBay made a great comeback on its investment, when it sold Microsoft in 2011 for $ 8.5 billion, it was still growing very much before its final decline.
Grabbing
By the time Microsoft brought a check book for Skype, the VoIP service had more than 600 million registered users worldwide, with an estimated 300 million active active every month. I can tell you that I, my two brothers, both my parents, and a large part of our extended friends and family used it. Skype was in the form of the word that we used for VoIP calling, “Yes I will do them later.”
But this was just the beginning of global expansion of Skype. With Microsoft now, with its adoption and furthering it as a premiere communication tool and technology on its Xbox and Windows platforms, it reached close to 100 million users in a month in 2014, capturing the incredible 40% of the international call market in 2014.
However it started looking at new, greater increased competition Cloud-based services such as Zoom, Google Meat, and Microsoft’s own teams, Skype also saw a revival during the epidemic. In March 2020 when the worldwide lockdown was first effective, Skype saw a 70% increase in the number of daily users in the last month.
However, as the epidemic rolled out and the VoIP industry contracted for its kestone, Skype rapidly unstable itself, and the number of daily users continued to decline in the later years. In 2023, the daily user count fell to 36 million, while Microsoft teams hit over 300 million active users around the same time limit.
Microsoft eventually inspired to announce in early 2025 that it would close the Skype forever on 5 May.
An icon Sunseting
However, it seems that Microsoft was developing teams Skype’s death placenta, it is possible that it was never intended. Also in 2023, Microsoft added Bing AI Chatbot to Skype. Although this can be a way to compete user numbers for its new AI undertakings, its potential Microsoft still felt that Skype could find its niche.
But today, he is a part of the large collective of apps and services swallowed by top major companies and then excluded for pastures. Microsoft And Google Both have their wiki pages for this, it is widespread.
Although it is never unavoidable, it is easy to understand how Skype can struggle to compete in the modern scenario of apps and services. WhatsApp and telegram voice and video calling quickly, convenient and focus on their smartphones. The discord is great to handle large group calls, and zoom, teams and professional landscapes like zoom.
Skype is not just more relevant. This makes me a little sad, because I had many basic online gaming moments on Skype. I spoke to my then girlfriend, now for the first time a wife on her. I now called the video dead grandparents on this during the epidemic.
But now the time has come to say goodbye. Perhaps I will give Eco a final call for the old times.
