Nostalgia flows as Skype shuts down for good

Microsoft is encouraging Skype’s remaining users to migrate to Teams, its calling service that it says offers many of the same calling and messaging functions but there are also plenty of other free alternatives. Skype for Business, a separate service, will remain functional, it said.

“Skype was a broadening of horizons in my mind,” technology journalist and broadcaster Will Guyatt said in a phone interview on Monday, recalling how he became a user when it first launched. At the time, he said, it was a novel way to keep in touch with friends who had moved abroad or were travelling. “It was quite eye-opening – the fact that you could make decent calls to people on computers and then pretty soon after that solid video calls,” he recalled. “It made it simple and easy to do.”

The news of Skype’s closure prompted a flood of nostalgia from other users online. For some millennials, Skype’s heyday coincided with coming-of-age moments, and its familiar bubbly ringtone conjured up core memories.

“Goodbye folks. It’s been a long, productive relationship. To finding love, to interviewing for the first job and many, many more,” wrote one user on Reddit.

“The hardest part is going to be teaching my [technologically] inept parents how to use a new app,” joked one commenter in response.

“Many memories were shared through late-night calls and laughter. You connected us across miles and time zones. Goodbye, old friend,” wrote one user in a tribute to Skype shared on X.

“Goodbye, Skype … You stuttered, you froze, and you disconnected … But, you served us well in times of need,” another said.

Others expressed disappointment with Microsoft’s decision to not refund Skype credit to some users. The company said it will add an option for Skype account holders to keep using their funds for phone calls online or in Teams.

Skype was founded in Tallinn, Estonia, in 2003, by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis. The service’s VoIP technology allowed free calls between Skype users, bypassing traditional phone companies and their expensive call rates. For a fee, users could also call traditional telephone numbers from a Skype account. In 2005, eBay bought Skype for $2.6 billion and later added video calls.

Skype ultimately failed to keep up with rivals – most notably Zoom, but also other services offered by Cisco, WhatsApp, Google and Apple – at the same time as its owner, Microsoft, invested heavily in Teams. By 2023, Skype’s number of daily users had dropped to 36 million, the company said at the time.

Guyatt, the tech journalist, said Microsoft initially invested in new features for Skype but ultimately neglected it in favour of Teams. As a result, Skype failed to keep up with shifting consumer habits, and that became obvious during the pandemic. He said it was difficult to jump on to a Skype call quickly because it required a Microsoft log-in, and the tool focused on calls between two users, as opposed to the digital meeting rooms that people had grown accustomed to.

“Microsoft fiddled around improving the video quality, but didn’t offer loads of new features, and that’s where ultimately it lost out,” Guyatt said. “People had better features on other services.”