UPD: February 28 at 21:00.
Microsoft has made an official statement that Skype will be shutting down in May 2025 as the company is moving its resources to Microsoft Teams.
"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," the statement reads.
A new preview version of Skype for Windows has a line with information that Microsoft will close the service in May 2025. XDA Developers noticed the message.
- Users of the once popular video messenger are offered to switch to Microsoft Teams.
- In particular, the message reads: "Starting in May, Skype will no longer be available. Continue your calls and chats in Teams".
- This is followed by a note that a certain number "of your friends have already moved to Teams free", presumably based on your contacts.
- Microsoft has not yet made any official statements about the closure of the service.
How Skype died
Skype was launched in 2003 by Estonian developers Priit Kasesalu and Jaan Tallinn. Microsoft acquired Skype in 2011 for $8.5 billion, after which the company gradually abandoned its own communications products, such as Windows Live Messenger.
In 2015, the company attempted to integrate Skype into Windows 10, but the integration was unsuccessful. In 2017, Microsoft introduced Teams, an enterprise communication platform based on Skype technology, to compete with services such as Slack.
Since then, the company has been actively promoting Teams, which was evident after the release of Windows 11, when Teams, and not Skype, received deep integration into the system.
Skype did not achieve the expected success, facing competition from Apple's FaceTime, the failure of the Windows Phone mobile platform, and numerous Google communication services.
