It is time to say sayonara to Skype, with Microsoft on Friday saying it will be shutting down the video and chat app in May.
In its place, Microsoft will be offering a free version of Teams. Current Skype users will have the option to move over their chat history and contacts to Teams once Skype is turned off.
“Skype users will be in control, they’ll have the choice,” Jeff Teper, Microsoft’s president of Microsoft 365 collaborative apps and platforms, told The Verge. “They can migrate their conversation history and their contacts out and move on if they want, or they can migrate to Teams.”
Microsoft reported Skype had 36 million daily users in 2023 — or about 270 million less than chief rival Zoom had at the time. Teams, for comparison, hit 320 monthly users by the end of 2023.
The app’s shutdown will come 14 years after Microsoft spent $8.5 billion to acquire Skype in May 2011.
Wall Street did not seem too worked up about the Skype news, with Microsoft’s stock price down just 1 point on Friday morning; the tech giant is the third most-valuable company on Earth with a market cap of $2.9 trillion.
Skype will shut down on May 5, three months shy of its 22nd anniversary.
