Skype

The app that taught the world to video call across continents for free — acquired by Microsoft for $8.5B and slowly replaced by Teams until there was nothing left.

† 2003 – 2025Killed by parent Died in 2025

Born

2003

Died

2025

Lifespan

22 years

Cause of Death

Killed by parent

What Happened

Skype launched in August 2003 out of Estonia, built by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis on peer-to-peer technology originally developed for Kazaa. It let anyone make free internet calls — a radical idea when international long-distance was still billed by the minute.

Skype grew into a verb. 'Skype me' entered the vocabulary of remote families, international teams, and journalists reporting from war zones. At its peak, Skype had hundreds of millions of users and carried a meaningful percentage of the world's international call minutes.

eBay acquired Skype in 2005 for $2.6B, sold it to Silver Lake in 2009, and Microsoft bought it in 2011 for $8.5B — then the largest acquisition in Microsoft's history. What followed was a slow, painful decline: a forced rewrite away from peer-to-peer, a confused UI that changed every year, constant rebrands, and the rise of FaceTime, WhatsApp, Zoom, and eventually Microsoft's own Teams.

On February 28, 2025, Microsoft announced Skype would shut down on May 5, 2025. Users were nudged toward Microsoft Teams Free. Twenty-two years after it started letting strangers talk across the world for free, Skype logged off for the last time.

“We've learned a lot from Skype over the years which we've put into Teams. We felt like now is the time because we can be simpler for the market and deliver more innovation faster just by being focused on Teams.”

— Jeff Teper, President of Microsoft 365 Collaborative Apps, February 2025

Last Words — Official Shutdown Notice

“Starting in May 2025, Skype will no longer be available. Over the coming months, you can sign in to Microsoft Teams Free with your Skype account to stay connected with all your chats and contacts.”