Skype to Be Retired, as Microsoft Finally Remembers It Exists

It’s the end of an era, and possibly the end of that one app still clinging to life on your desktop, because Microsoft has decided that Skype—yes, Skype still existed—is being retired in May 2025. In a stunning display of corporate consistency, the tech giant is pushing users to Microsoft Teams, a product designed for people who really enjoy saying “Can you hear me now?” ten times per meeting.

Skype, which at its peak was synonymous with video calling and also with that weird ‘boop’ sound whenever someone logged in, has been on death watch since approximately five minutes after Microsoft acquired it in 2011. Over the years, the company has done everything in its power to make people forget Skype exists, including burying it under layers of Windows updates, replacing useful features with emoji reactions, and occasionally just making it stop working for no reason at all.

A Brief History of Microsoft’s Relationship with Skype

Microsoft’s handling of Skype over the past decade can best be described as “aggressively negligent.” After purchasing it for a casual $8.5 billion—an amount that probably could have bought roughly two and a half Twitters back then—Microsoft promptly set about ‘improving’ it by stuffing it with unnecessary features, removing ones people actually liked, and making it just unappealing enough that even your grandma gave up and switched to Zoom.

The final nail in the coffin? Microsoft Teams. Originally designed for corporate drudgery and passive-aggressive status messages, Teams has somehow absorbed all of Microsoft’s attention, leaving Skype to wander the tech wilderness like an aging social network nobody quite wants to shut down but nobody actively remembers either. In many ways, this was the only logical conclusion: Skype has been left out in the cold for so long, it’s practically a Myspace with better audio quality.

What Happens Now?

According to Microsoft, Skype for consumers will officially be sunsetted in May, 2025. But let’s be honest, it effectively died when “Let’s just use Zoom” became the default response to planning a video call. Skype for Business, Microsoft’s other, slightly more respectable failure, was already laid to rest in 2021, and now the last remnants of Skype’s once-proud legacy are being put out of their misery.

Of course, Microsoft is encouraging people to migrate to Teams, because nothing says “personal video calling” like software originally designed to make remote work slightly more unbearable. Teams is so universally beloved that it has a dedicated Reddit community filled with people whose only joy in life is complaining about it. So, naturally, Microsoft sees this as an upgrade.

The Legacy of Skype

For those of us who remember when Skype was the future, this moment is tinged with nostalgia. Who among us didn’t use it to connect with distant relatives, conduct deeply unprofessional job interviews, or accidentally turn on the camera while wearing pyjamas?

Skype was there for us before FaceTime, before WhatsApp calls, before Zoom. It was the Wild West of online communication, where dropouts were frequent, lag was inevitable, and yet, somehow, it worked just well enough that we all kept using it.

As Skype fades into the digital ether, it can now join Clippy in the pantheon of Microsoft relics, like so many of Microsoft’s acquisitions (RIP Nokia, LinkedIn, and whatever’s happening with Activision Blizzard), Skype is being quietly shuffled out of sight. We can only assume the farewell party will take place in a Teams meeting that nobody can quite figure out how to join.

Goodnight, sweet prince. May your login sound echo in eternity.