Microsoft is shutting down Skype, the internet-based telephone and video service that was as soon as the dominant method of staying related within the mid 2000s.
Skype will “now not be accessible” to make use of beginning in Might, the firm confirmed on X, telling customers that their log-in data can be utilized on Microsoft Groups’ free tier within the “coming days.”
Skype’s shutdown comes 14 years after Microsoft purchased the service for $8.5 billion in money, marking the corporate’s largest ever acquisition on the time. Microsoft built-in the service into its different merchandise, comparable to Workplace and it’s ill-fated cell working service Home windows Telephone.
Skype’s recognition has pale in recent times, regardless of a pandemic bounce that lifted different competing merchandise, together with Zoom, Google Meet and Cisco WebEx.
Skype has additionally confronted elevated competitors over the past decade and a half from apps like Apple’s FaceTime and Meta’s WhatsApp. Plus, Microsoft has been investing closely in Groups, which gives lots of the identical providers.
Skype launched in 2003 in Estonia and shortly caught on as a approach to make free calls worldwide, a notable perk contemplating worldwide calling on conventional telephones was once costly.
The service shortly grew to become standard, main eBay to purchase it in 2005 for $2.6 billion. Nonetheless, the partnership didn’t work out, and eBay bought its 65% stake in Skype to an investor group for $1.9 billion in 2009 earlier than Microsoft purchased it in 2011.
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