Microsoft is reportedly killing Skype after 14 years of neglect
196 comments
·February 28, 2025drooopy
bayindirh
I think Microsoft killed it the moment when they made everything move through central servers before everyone had good network connection, everywhere. It was P2P before.
It was slow, laggy and unstable for most of the time. Also, they didn't invest in the transportation codecs much.
After it's marred, they didn't try to mend it much, and when it started to work well due to better bandwidth, they didn't push it back again. It fell to the wayside of "value-adds" all Windows software vendors love to put in the bag.
> "Oh you get the whole Office, great. There's some Skype for you, too. You know it doesn't work well, but it won't hurt to have it installed, no?"
So they blew their chances, badly. I personally don't like Microsoft, but they could have made me use it, if it worked well. Now I use Meet, which is again bundled with Google One, but it's web based and works much better. It also supports the nice features (noise cancelling, advanced backgrounds and whatnot) under Firefox, too.
dcminter
Personally I think their big, incomprehensibly stupid manoeuver was the Skype vs Skype for Business (Link) split. Had they merged them into a single client that could speak either protocol and share contact lists the story would have been very different.
Why are megacorps so incomprehensibly clueless about this? Is the money pit so deep that they knock each other in while in-fighting for control on the edge of it?
bayindirh
> Is the money pit so deep that they knock each other in while in-fighting for control on the edge of it?
I remember somebody saying "Micorosft is an amalgam of different power centers and dynamics. Some people inside genuinely loves open source and wants to be part of that, and some hate it like it's the evil itself. So, there's in-fighting and power struggles in many areas in Microsoft".
I think the comment came after a project manager personally gutted .NET Core's Hot Reload support to give closed source parts a boost, and things got very ugly both inside and outside of Microsoft.
decimalenough
Lync was completely unrelated software with a different tech stack that was just branded as Skype.
Cthulhu_
I think it was the other way around, they know about the issues with Skype and built something new, but they knew the power of the Skype brand so they slapped it onto their new product.
nickdothutton
Easier to monitor if centralised.
bayindirh
Yes, everyone and their Windows installs and their _NSAKEY guessed the reason was that.
kaon_
This. In German the word for "video-calling" is "Skyping". Similar to MSN, the strength of the brand and goodwill that it has in some geographies is on-par with Google for search, or Coca Cola for coke. The fact that the software got consistently worse, year on year on year is hard to grasp for me. Microsoft made the right call to cannibalize and use teams. But how was Skype such a pain? Not being able to share screenshots in chat killed it for me.
harvey9
Coke is a trademark owned by Coca-Cola - the generic word is cola. Their brand is so strong that even though you were thinking about the topic of branding they still got you!
fh973
In Germany, MS was very successful though to get organizations on Teams during the pandemic. Zoom is not a thing.
Sure, it's nice to brand the verb, but when the product behind it is EOL, why bother.
wkat4242
That's because teams was offered for fee with m365 which most companies used anyway.
Having said that, Zoom is an absolutely terrible product. The backdoor they installed in Macs for example and then when it was brought to light refused to remove it until Apple was forced to blacklist the application. They're either incompetent or evil.
tetris11
Jitsi and BBB were pretty popular across universities at the time, back when the German government were pivoting hard into Element/Matrix:
ianbooker
Zoom is a thing in Germany.
OvbiousError
Almost everything I do for work uses teams, so I can't say MS missed any boats. It's spectacular how pervasive teams is given how universally reviled it is. I'd personally switch back to slack in a heartbeat for instance.
l33tman
Don't know about Slack's videoconf, but Slack's cheap insistence that we pay a rip-off amount of money per month for storing some TEXT messages more than 90 days has continuously degraded my appreciation for it over the last years to the level of me hating it now.
They're so cheap. Just put a quota on total storage or something, that actually map to their costs..
We have a Slack for a shared office of 10 people or so, we use it to like ask each other for where to go for lunch or general stuff, it must cost them $0.001/month to host, but you continuously get a banner that says PAY TO UNLOCK THESE EXCITING OLD MESSAGES all over it, and when you check what they want, they want some exorbitant amount like $10/month/user so $100/month for a lunch-synchronization tool. For $100/month I can store like 5 TB on S3, that's a lot of texts.
I'm genuinely curious why they don't have some other payment option, I'd be happy to pay $1/month/user for some basic level if they just don't want freeloaders there. Well, I wouldn't be happy.. but still :)
crummy
This frustrates me too. Discord stores your messages forever for free! They're slowly eating Slack's lunch when it comes to internet communities... but I guess Slack doesn't really care; those communities were never going to pay any real money anyway.
OskarS
Slack is primarily a business tool, and for a business tool $10/user/month is extremely reasonable for the value (perceived or real) it brings. The company has to make money, and you do that by charging for your products and services, and that price is not exorbitant.
bayindirh
Slack is part of Salesforce now. Do I need to say anything else?
el_snark
You may like to look at a self-hosted mattermost then.
mrkramer
>The way Microsoft and Skype missed their opportunity during the pandemic
They missed the huge opportunity way before on mobile and in gaming, that's when WhatsApp and Discord stepped in and destroyed Skype.
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goodmachine
A message from the Skype CEO [NSFW]
cynicalsecurity
Big corporations are usually super slow and clumsy in implementing anything new or doing any quick changes.
7bit
What? Teams was and is everywhere. The opportunity was taken so hard, the EU ruled that Teams must be decoupled from the Office Suite and Windows because it was near impossible to not have or use Teams. All that happened because and during the pandemic.
high_na_euv
Missed?
They grew Teams, lol.
Zoom - wtf, who the hell uses it after.
Discord would be better example since it is huge, even LLVM community uses it
mrintegrity
Discord missed an opportunity to become the video calling and chat king, the smoothness of joining and leaving a group video chat when you please and the high quality video, audio and app support was exactly the kind of "just like being in the office but virtual" experience that teams, skype, slack, zoom, meet, etc lack. During peak covid it was a godsend having calls with friends and playing games together.
My dream service would be very like discord but with scheduled meeting support and completely open source and self hostable.
Cthulhu_
I suspect quite a few people still use Zoom out of habit / procedure, but you can see on its stock market value that it really was a pandemic success, its stock market dropped and flattened out after 2022.
robin_reala
A deaf colleague massively preferred Zoom to Teams because the video quality on Zoom allowed a lot more sign language nuance to transfer.
polskibus
Isn’t Teams running on Skype at least in some part ? I noticed that sometimes teams urls or copied data from Teams contain Skype word.
dijit
End of an era, but the writing was on the wall.
I have fond memories of using skype to contact my friends and family circa-2011 when I was working for Nokia in Finland.
Ironically, microsoft killed nokia the same way microsoft killed skype, an acquisition and then strangulation.
if nothing else, it’s at least two times the european tech sector was actively harmed by US tech giants… which isn’t much, but weird that it happened twice.
tonyhart7
"microsoft killed nokia"
nokia did that to themselves, microsoft aquisition just prolonged its inevitable ends
KingOfCoders
Loved my yellow Lumia 920. I thought the panels and scrolling start screen was much better (concurrently used Android and iOS at that time).
Just like with Zune, it was not part of MS strategy and therefor dropped. You need to keep working on something like this for years to make it successful. Large companies though drop products that are not a huge success after two years, associated with such products is a career killer.
[Edit] I got the Lumia to decide as a CTO at that time if we would go into Windows phones or not. I asked for more Lumias and XBox (to show cross plattform eCommerce) from MS to evangelize inside the company, but was let hung dry. So we did not support Windows phones. They never went full in.
tonyhart7
absolutely the fact they just give out on hardware side eg:nokia,surface device,zune,vr headset etc is just disappointing
I think this is about company culture as a whole too, MS only know how to make software
this is same problem with google too, with pixel device is very underwhelming success given how many resource they have
robertlagrant
If I remember correctly, the CEO at the time Steve Ballmer said they were betting the farm on mobile and ARM-based tablet computing. They went very hard on mobile until SatNad came along and killed it.
(Former Touch Diamond user here.)
out_of_protocol
That was the funny story - Nokia got it's latest CEO (Stephen Elop) from M$, successfully almost-destroyed company, got it acquired by M$ and hopped back to M$. So, probably, it was the plan all along
tonyhart7
why do you think this is happen in the first place???
the Board and Shareholder knew that it was sinking ships so it want cashout to Microsoft at least before its going to rubble
skrebbel
Sure, though if you strangle a junkie about to OD, you still strangled them.
victorbjorklund
Not true. Nokia was already dying. Microsoft made a bad attempt to save Nokia when the heart had already stopped.
pembrook
Same for Skype.
Yes, most acquirers bungle the acquisition (regardless of nationality), but the reason these companies decide to sell in the first place is because their future prospects on their own don’t look great.
Skype was a consumer success but consumers violently hate paying for software (just read HN).
The market for video calls-as-a-business is entirely B2B. Skype with their fun whimsical branding and non-sales dominant culture couldn’t hack it. Plus, big dumb enterprises hate screening new vendors, so Microsoft/Cisco/etc were always going to win that space.
Zoom basically swooped in later able to take all the learnings from Skype and go B2B from the start.
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klohto
> actively harmed by US tech giants
Both Nokia and Skype went under due to usual European leadership stagnation and comfort before getting bought. Thankfully both sales funneled enough funds into EU to bootstrap a startup culture here.
caseyy
I've worked for a European company acquired by big tech in the US. My experience was that the Americans were quite full of themselves and didn't want to learn how we operated. There was a vibe of “things are going to change around here, no more free rides, the grown-ups have arrived.” Awful management decisions were made, most of the talent left, and the team from the original company now only exists on paper.
n=1 and all, but I've heard similar stories. European tech companies have very different cultures and ways of making money, shaped by our laws and consumer expectations.
Skype, for example, was used as a pay phone and a simple messaging app before Microsoft bought it. You put in a euro, and you call and message your friends. It mutated into a bloated Microsoft Live app with several different front-ends, including some integrations with Office and various subscription services that sold the same thing in multiple ways. Core features stopped working, too. I'm sure someone liked the Frankenstein monster that it became (I don't kink-shame sadists), but most of the original users, and especially Europeans, did not.
If Microsoft had a purpose for Skype except for taking out a competitor, I'd say the decline would have been the result of managerial incompetence and American managers' lack of understanding of Europe. But of course, once a competitor bought Skype, there was no reason for it to exist anymore, so perhaps that is the reason it died.
Still, I wouldn't blame Europe so quickly. American big tech often fails to do business here within the local culture and laws, too.
xnorswap
I too have worked for a European company bought out by a large American company.
They too didn't understand our culture. They completely ignored the parts of our business that were scalable and taking off, and focused instead on nebulous "synergies". They actually seemed more interested in us taking on their branding than what we actually did. They'd push down demands to chase some latest trends but when we needed something back from them they struggled to give us the time of day.
They also immediately tried to give pay cuts and force immediate redundancies and seemed shocked to discover they couldn't legally do that. So instead they had to polite request that people in our company take a pay cut. I only know of one person naive enough to take them up on that offer.
I left a few years post acquisition, it was clear things would not get better we were just left rudderless because we'd previously been run by the founder for ~25 years and now were run by no-one with no direction.
skeletal88
Anecdote about MS and Skype.
Knew a developer who worked there.
Day 1 of aquisition - there were 4 layers of managers between him and Steve Ballmer.
A year later there were 8. Tjis is how much bureaucracy and managers MS added in only one year
mschuster91
> I've worked for a European company acquired by big tech in the US. My experience was that the Americans were quite full of themselves and didn't want to learn how we operated.
Yup, that's also my experience. Americans are just like the unofficial President - they don't take "no" for an answer when they demand something, no matter what, unless you manage to get court judgements because that actually threatens the bottom line.
> Still, I wouldn't blame Europe so quickly. American big tech often fails to do business here within the local culture and laws, too.
I always remember when Wal-Mart tried to come to Germany... and had to leave with its tail tucked in because they just couldn't cope with stuff being done differently here [1].
[1] https://medium.com/the-global-millennial/why-walmart-failed-...
hulitu
> If Microsoft had a purpose for Skype.
Yes, it was used as a backdoor to scrap user data when the computer was not in use. That's why i uninstalled it.
sl-1
Nope, Nokia was killed via suicide-by-microsoft-exec. They took in a MS aligned CEO and promptly proceeded to destroy their own chance of competing (using Maemo/meego or android for their phones) by using MS operating system.
I guess one could call it leadership stagnation, but I would argue more it being just plain old stupidity
ahoka
Microsoft did not buy or kill Nokia though.
jajko
> Both Nokia and Skype went under due to usual European leadership stagnation and comfort before getting bought. Thankfully both sales funneled enough funds into EU to bootstrap a startup culture here.
What? None of those were EU government owned, all was private. Do people really have this sort of (completely incorrect) view on how things work in Europe? Not even donald was ever stating such ridiculous things
riffraff
Skype got me through my first few years living in a different country from my family/friends/girlfriend/enployer.
There was a time when whole companies were on Skype the way they're now on Slack.
It's incredible how badly Microsoft mismanaged it.
disillusioned
We were one of those companies. I remember that you had to alter the order of users added to a group in order to have multiple groups (the equivalent of "channels") with the same member list. We'd use that trick to essentially have per-project channels. It wasn't necessarily super graceful, but it mostly worked.
When we made the jump to Slack in early 2014, we migrated as much of our Skype history as we could, which was _a project_, but again, mostly worked.
moomin
I’m loving this: it’s a complete misfeature that anyone can point out is conceptually just wrong, but also implemented so incompetently there’s a workaround.
sky2224
> It's incredible how badly Microsoft mismanaged it.
It's incredible how badly Microsoft mismanaged a lot of products. It genuinely makes me think they're aware of it at this point.
tonyhart7
"Microsoft mismanaged it."
they don't even manage it, like they just let it "stay" that way
I think this is the problem with Trillion dollar company, they don't want focus on "small money" problem and they can just buy tech/company if they find it important enough in the future
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gloxkiqcza
Skype for Business UX > MS Teams UX
john_the_writer
Yep.. in almost every way it should have beat out slack. It did everything better, and had a name. It was so very close, but lost. Mostly I think because of how hard it was to get non-users into it's eco system.
tonyhart7
wdym non user?? it integrate nicely with windows eg:for sometimes skype installed by default on windows
caseyy
When Microsoft acquired Skype (the company), it was clear they would kill it. Skype had previously been bought by eBay, for which it served the purpose of entering a new market. Then, it was bought by some investment funds, for which it served the purpose of making money. However, to Microsoft, which already had its Windows/Live messenger (which copied Skype’s homework anyway), Skype served no purpose except to remove a competitor. They did not have a reason to develop it.
I’m surprised, in some ways, that it took almost 15 years for it to die. If Microsoft absorbed the Skype tech in 1 year and rebranded/reskinned Live Messenger to look like Skype, they could have been done with it in 2012.
Now, they are retiring Live Messenger and Skype. Two technologies have become zero. It is interesting that they chose to go this way.
wsc981
I am not even sure if Microsoft was interested in the technology. I believe Skype originally functioned using some kind of p2p network. I believe Microsoft replaced this way of working shortly after acquiring Skype. Perhaps on behalf of security agencies.
grishka
> I believe Skype originally functioned using some kind of p2p network.
It did! It was some impressively cool tech too. At the time, at least in my country, some ISPs would disable your internet access when you didn't pay, but the LAN between subscribers still worked. So obviously nothing worked, except Skype. My theory then was that it would find a path to route around the disconnection by having the Skype client of a different subscriber on the same LAN, that did have internet access, relay your traffic to the rest of the network.
machomaster
This approach to technology has serious problems. I would send a message to someone and turned off my computer, thinking that the message would be sent whenever the recipient was online. However, that was not the case. The message only arrived when we were online at the same time. Therefore, Skype is completely useless as a tool for asynchronous communication, for the main type of messaging!
mrweasel
I seem to recall that Skype had the concept of "super nodes" which could facilitate NAT traversal for of users which didn't have a direct internet connection. Microsoft got rid of that pretty fast and replaced it with Microsoft managed servers (which to be fair seems less sketchy that using random users machines as something akin to a STUN server).
caseyy
Perhaps. I would more readily believe that if Microsoft didn't have an established pattern of killing competitor companies and tech.
I think they really tried to merge Skype with Live Messenger, stripping Skype for parts. And maybe those parts weren't the tech as much as the brand, but we don't know how much tech they adopted.
Agraillo
We take the modern internet speeds for granted, at that time the tech behind Skype was top notch and probably when Skype made its way into Windows, that looked like the original destination. But later many questionable decisions made things worse even before the internet became faster and other voice technologies were up to the task. One of them was changing the protocol that made many headsets bricked. Probably from the marketing point of view it was a "if one wants Skype, he or she would buy Windows" step, but obviously it was not
AnonC
Tangential: I have a U.S. Skype Number (i.e., a real phone number offered by the Skype service) that's mainly used to receive and make (occasional) calls from/to a bank and to receive SMS occasionally. The cost is about $40 a year. With Skype Number not available for purchase since December and the Skype platform (including Skype Number) going away soon, what are some simple, good (and preferably cheaper) alternatives for a VoIP service that works on an iPhone? I do not have any (other) real phone number in the U.S. I guess my current Skype Number cannot be ported or moved to another service.
Are there any alternatives to get a real U.S. phone number that will work in another country for long periods (AFAIK, many providers require the phone to connect to a local cellular network periodically)?
Edit: In case it wasn't apparent, I'm not physically in the U.S.
samsk
Try zadarma.com I've multiple numbers there
csomar
I have the same problem and I want something as straightforward and un-scammy looking as Skype. And no, I don't want to configure some SIP client or some stuff like that.
freetime2
I was using Google Voice for a while, which is nice because it is free and never had any issues receiving SMS. A US phone number is required to activate, so I used a US relative's phone number to activate and then just disabled all the forwarding features so calls and SMS would never be forwarded to that number.
Unfortunately, I went so long without actually using it that they took my number away (my fault because they did send me a warning but I just forgot about it). Now I'm in the same boat as you as I had switched to a Skype Number after that.
But Google Voice is a decent free option to consider if there's someone in the US who could help you with initial activation. Until Google finally decides to kill it, at least. I'm frankly surprised that Microsoft killed Skype before Google killed Voice.
chneu
I've been using Gvoice pretty much since it started. I'm just as surprised as you that Google hasnt killed it. The writing has seemed to be on the wall a few times but it's still around, thankfully.
When they semi-killed hangouts a couple years ago I thought for sure Gvoice was gone.
AnonC
GP here: I had the exact same experience with Google Voice (linked to my Skype Number several years ago). Sadly, I could never get it to work with another Skype Number again.
jim180
I use tello.com. You can get eSIM and activate it while you are outside the U.S. If you won't activate roaming, sms and calling will use wifi calling.
SXX
Tello costs at least $5 / month though. Skype was jusy pay as you go.
csomar
I pay $6.5/month for the number. It is pay as you go for calling but you have to pay for the number.
dzhiurgis
Do you know how providers detect your country when using wifi calling? Mine says it's only valid while you are within the country, wonder if VPN would work around it.
jim180
No idea, but Tello always worked outside of the U.S - Lithuania in my case.
I guess, provider will always consider your country where the phone number is located. Funny thing, while I'm roaming, my IP address will always be Lithuanian. It does not matter where the world I'm currently staying.
kolp
Try voip.ms. Incoming texts can be sent to you as an email. A US number costs about $1.50 a month.
jraph
It seems what you are looking for is a SIP provider. There are many. Some of them allow interconnection with the "real" phone network.
rwmj
If only SIP wasn't such a trashfire of non-interoperating impossible to configure garbage.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK
TextNow, $10 a month
jszymborski
VoIP.ms
misantroop
Microsoft help pages claiming that they will not refund your unused credits if your card has expired or details changed. So Microsoft effectively is taking all the users credit for themselves. Filing a complain with the appropriate EU regulator on this as debit/credit cards expire regularly and that's just an excuse for Microsoft to take your funds.
switch007
Legally I'm sure they're covered. We've probably purchased non refundable "credits" that just happen to show in a format that resembles money but absolutely aren't money or exchangeable for money.
It's not their first time at taking our unused money, sorry credits
nneonneo
I put $10 on an account over ten years ago to make sporadic calls (e.g. customer service in other countries). That account still has $5 left, and I’ve made a ton of calls to many different countries.
What’s a good alternative here? I just want to make outgoing international calls cheaply.
pm3003
SIP providers. I used Ippi before 2015, but then EU regulations made it illegal to bill more for EU calls than for domestic calls, so I had almost no more use for it.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK
I use MobileVOIP, but voice quality and the probability of a call to connect is inferior to Skype.
dzhiurgis
30-50 cents per minute is very expensive.
rwmj
Especially an alternative that doesn't mean giving money to Google or using any Meta service.
edwcross
Microsoft killed Skype for me a few months ago: the Linux version simply stopped working, and unless I install a Snap-based one (which I cannot do remotely on family computers), it's now useless.
Also, my Skype credit simply disappeared from the account (granted, it had been sitting idle for a few years, but still).
WhatsApp, Signal and similar apps completely replaced Skype, which stopped innovating years ago. Other than some "automatic captioning" based on Bing, and interface changes that are annoying for computer-illiterate people, barely anything changed.
For several years, Skype had been a very lightweight way to communicate with people with not-so-good computers and flaky Internet connection. Trying to replace it with Jitsi, for instance, quickly shows how much more CPU is needed to run that instead. But then the Linux version started being packaged differently (Electron?), so that was lost as well.
Well, it will likely survive for some time on old companies that still use Skype for Business.
wuschel
Skype was very useful to call landlines from or two countries e.g. Europe to India. To my knowledge, Whatsapp et al do not fill this niche.
Is there another solution that has this functionality?
kombine
I used to use Skype to call my grandfather's landline back home, until he passed away two years ago. I just opened Skype to scroll through our call history all the way to 2018. It will be gone soon just like he did.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK
I use MobileVOIP, but voice quality and the probability of a call to connect is inferior to Skype.
dzhiurgis
Used to, now they are kinda expensive (as most of providers).
pm3003
SIP providers, such as Ippi.
ndsipa_pomu
> unless I install a Snap-based one (which I cannot do remotely on family computers)
I find that surprising - you could do something like "snap install skype" from the command line. Do you not have remote command line access?
croisillon
yeah my Skype credit has been quietly gulped too but officially you can reactivate it when needed
SXX
It's still possible through website. Makes me wonder if they will refund me mine.
axelthegerman
Just waiting for an OSS Skype clone built on alternative infrastructure such as Twilio or jitsi meet under the hood haha
Honestly though, I'll miss the 2ct/min calls to pretty much any landline in foreign countries
loloquwowndueo
We use Skype to make long-distance calls to relatives who only have land lines. (For reasons, gifting the relative an Internet-connected device and just using FaceTime is NOT an option).
I wonder what we will use once Skype shuts down - Google voice is also not an option (they stopped wanting our money years ago).
Macha
Oh, that will be hard for my grandparents and some overseas family members. Someone managed to teach them Skype at great effort some years ago and it's still the main they use for video calling to see their grandkids. Probably will need to try teach them Google Meet or something instead, but they're not the most receptive to new tech.
doublerabbit
Jitsi Meet.
My elderly mother uses it easy with the app on iPhone.
Minimal effort to join a conversations and supports all devices. Secure E2E if you host it yourself and has most features of zoom.
The way Microsoft and Skype missed their opportunity during the pandemic to maintain or even expand their lead in video conferencing, while allowing a complete unknown (outside of the corporate world, at least) like Zoom to become the dominant platform, should be studied in business schools.
The term 'Skype' is so synonymous with video calling that, based on personal experience, it is still used in place of FaceTime and other services, especially by older people.