Microsoft announced yesterday it will retire the once-popular video-calling app Skype in May and focus on its flagship Teams service. Skype was considered a pioneer in how people communicated online across borders before competition exploded from platforms like FaceTime, WhatsApp, Slack, and Zoom.
Skype was founded in 2003 by a group of Nordic engineers. The platform quickly reached 10 million users, and two years later, eBay acquired it for $2.6B. In 2009, a consortium of investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, bought a 65% stake in Skype for $1.9B, valuing the business at nearly $3B. Microsoft then bought Skype for $8.5B in 2011, the tech giant’s largest acquisition at the time, to replace its Windows Live Messenger. At its peak in 2016, Skype boasted around 300 million monthly users. By 2023, the number of users had dropped to roughly 36 million.
The name “Skype” originates from “Sky peer-to-peer,” which was shortened to “Skyper” and then further shortened to “Skype” because the domain name “Skyper.com” had already been taken.
Listen to the history of Skype here.