The slow death of Skype could finally come to an end this year

Skype, once a trailblazer for internet-enabled video calling, might finally ride into the sunset after years of a shoddy competitive streak. The latest preview build of Skype ships with a few lines of code that mention a planned digital demise later this year.

“Starting in May, Skype will no longer be available. Continue your calls and chats in Teams,” says the string, which was first spotted by the folks over at XDA-Developers. The strings, which are located within the JSON files of the software package, also mentions that Microsoft wants the Skype user base migrating to its Teams platform.

The code suggests that users will either be shown a dialog box, or a text ribbon, that will inform them about the impending service shutdown. It will also nudge users to install Teams, and through a button, they will be directly taken to a page where they can download the app.

It seems Microsoft will make the whole process as seamless as possible. Moreover, since Skype has access to contact data associated with a Microsoft account, it will also inform users about the number of acquaintances that are already using Teams.

The inevitable was foreshadowed

Microsoft acquired Skype for a cool $8.5 billion back in 2011. The road ahead was riddled with some serious security hiccups and laggardness at innovation. In 2013, The Guardian reported on a top-secret eavesdropping program called PRISM, which allowed the NSA to collect an unprecedented amount of data from Skype video calls.

In 2018, Skype’s name again popped up in cybersex trafficking as part of a multinational network. The real demise, however, came at Microsoft’s own hands.

Despite being a pioneer, Skype quickly lost ground to competitors. The tech giant started focusing on Teams as its standout collaboration software, and soon, it became the company’s flagship communication product for enterprises as well as education clients.

Skype couldn’t even capitalize on the video conferencing boom that came courtesy of a worldwide shift to remote work and team collaboration. A global pandemic, which turned Zoom into a tech giant, proved to be another death knell for Skype, as Microsoft continued with its relentless Teams push while sidelining Skype.

As rival products continued to get refinements and added new features, Skype looked more like a relic in terms of its tech stack and function parity, which resulted in a sustained bleeding of its once-sprawling user base. What now remains is an official announcement from Microsoft, one that puts Skype to rest, for good.