Popular messenger closes forever after 20 years of operation
Microsoft closes one of the most famous messengers (photo: Getty Images)
Microsoft has officially confirmed that it will stop supporting Skype in May 2025. Users are encouraged to switch to Microsoft Teams, which has long been the company's priority platform, reports XDA Developers.
As one of the users noticed, the latest test version of Skype for Windows has a message: "Starting May, Skype will no longer be available. Please continue your calls and chats in Teams."
Skype shutdown announcement (photo: XDA Developers)
What we know about Skype
Skype first appeared in 2003 and was acquired by Microsoft in 2011. A few years later, the company shut down some of its own communication services, including Windows Live Messenger, and in 2015, it tried to integrate Skype into Windows 10.
However, Skype's integration with Windows 10 lasted only nine months. At first, Microsoft divided it into separate applications for video calls, messages, and calls, and in the next update, it removed them. In 2016, the company introduced the UWP version of Skype, abandoning the classic Win32, but soon returned to Win32 again, closing UWP.
In 2017, Microsoft launched Teams, a collaboration platform based on Skype technologies and designed to compete with Slack.
Percentage of different age groups on Skype in 2024 (photo: Enterprise Apps Today)
Since then, the company has been actively promoting Teams, so it's not surprising if you expected Skype to close six years ago when Microsoft eliminated Skype for Business. But each time there was another update.
In fact, Skype never became the hit that Microsoft had hoped for. This was hampered by the success of Apple's FaceTime, the failure of the company's own mobile platform (Windows Phone), and Google's endless messenger experiments.
When Windows 11 was released in 2021, it initially offered integration with Teams, just as Windows 10 version 1511 was once closely linked to Skype. This innovation soon disappeared, but the fact that Microsoft was offering a free personal version of Teams instead of Skype was a wake-up call.
Now the moment of final closure has arrived - Skype will be shut down in May. Most likely, you will soon see a notification in the app.
In 2024, the number of Skype users worldwide reached approximately 2.27 billion (photo: Coolest Gadgets)
What Microsoft Teams can do and who can use it
Microsoft Teams is a communication and collaboration platform developed by Microsoft. It combines chats, video calls, conferencing, file sharing, and integration with other Microsoft 365 services (Word, Excel, OneDrive, etc.).
The main features:
- Group and personal chats
- Video calls and online conferences
- Work with files right in the app
- Integration with Outlook, SharePoint, and other tools.
Teams is used both in business and in education - for remote work, online lessons, and collaborative projects. In 2017, the service was launched as a replacement for Skype for Business, and now it is becoming the main Microsoft messenger.
Microsoft Teams interface (photo: Medium)
