RIP Skype (2003–2025), survived by multiple versions of Microsoft Teams
Microsoft bought Skype for $8.5 billion in 2011, and now its journey is over.
Today is the day: Microsoft has formally shuttered the Skype app and service after announcing in February that Skype was being axed in favor of Microsoft Teams, the company's Slack competitor.
The Skype apps have all been advertising the end of the service and pointing users to Teams for weeks now. As of today, if you open the app or navigate to the Skype site, you'll be directed to use Teams instead. The last active vestige of Skype is the Skype Dial Pad, which Skype subscribers and members with Skype Credits can still use to make calls to traditional telephone numbers (the Dial Pad is also incorporated into Microsoft Teams Free).
It's an unceremonious end for an app that was once synonymous with video calls. Microsoft originally bought Skype for $8.5 billion in 2011; it was also owned by eBay from 2005 to 2009 and by a group of venture capital firms between 2009 and 2011. Ironically, Microsoft bought the app to replace its own first-party communication client at the time, Windows Live Messenger (which itself had grown out of the old MSN Messenger).
