Skype officially shuts down after 22 years of operation

Once hailed as a technology of the future, Skype, the video calling and messaging service, shut down on Monday, May 5, after 22 years in operation. 

Microsoft, which has owned Skype for 14 years, announced in February that it planned to end the service.

“In order to streamline our free consumer communications offerings so we can more easily adapt to customer needs, we will be retiring Skype in May 2025 to focus on Microsoft Teams (free), our modern communications and collaboration hub,” Jeff Teper, Microsoft president of collaborative apps and platforms, said at the time.

Microsoft decided to shut down Skype to focus its resources on developing its Microsoft Teams app, which includes all the services that Skype provided, plus more. 

As part of the transition, Microsoft announced it would offer a free version of Teams to all consumers who previously utilized Skype.

“With Teams, users have access to many of the same core features they use in Skype, such as one-on-one calls and group calls, messaging, and file sharing,” Teper said.

Apps like Teams, Zoom, Google Meets, and FaceTime quickly began competing with and overtaking Skype, which was bought by eBay in 2005 for a whopping $2.6bn.

This was before it was acquired by Microsoft in 2011 for $8.5bn. Five years later, 300 million people were making Skype calls every month.

However, this was a user number that was being replicated daily by its rival Zoom by the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic and Microsoft itself had rolled out Teams in 2017, something which it began to focus on more and more as Skype lagged behind.

It was in February 2025 that the global giant announced that it would close the curtains on Skype.

Users of the platform now have the ability to migrate their contacts and chat data to Microsoft Teams.

Alternatively, they will be able to download their data from the app and move to another video calling service.