2025-05-05
Skype is shutting down after 22 years: On May 5, Microsoft Teams will take the place of the free video-calling website.
Skype has been around for two decades and has been used by Windows users for a long time. Skype will be shutting down today, i.e, May 5th, 2025. In February, Microsoft, the parent company of Skype, revealed that the free video-calling website will be shutting down and being replaced with Microsoft Teams.
Although both free and paid Skype customers will be impacted by the closure, Skype for Business users will be merged into Microsoft Teams, which provides many of the same essential services as well as additional ones.
Skype is shutting down after 22 years: What will happen to your Skype account?
If you have a Skype account, all you need to do is log in to Teams with your Skype credentials, and all the chats and contacts will be available automatically. If you are opting out of Skype and don’t want to use Teams, then users can download their Skype data and transition to another video calling service. Users have 9 months to export or delete their Skype data. Users will still have access to their Skype call and conversation history if they sign in to Microsoft Teams Free by that time.
In January 2026, the user’s Skype data will be erased if they do nothing.
Steps to Export Skype Data
- Open the Skype Export page and log in with your Microsoft credentials.
- You can choose to download your files, discussions, or both.
- When asked, choose Continue after selecting Submit request.
- Click Download after the export procedure is finished.
Why did Skype shut down?
Skype’s popularity grew so quickly that Microsoft included it in Windows, iPhones, and Xbox consoles. Microsoft once set the goal of having one billion users. But it was cumbersome due to bloated updates and frequent interface changes. The platform’s demise was ultimately brought on by the COVID-19 epidemic and rivals like Zoom, Webex, Discord, and Slack.
Skype claimed to have 400 million registered users, but by 2025, that number had dropped to around 23 million monthly users, down from 150 million in 2011.
The company discontinued Windows Live Messenger and replaced Lync with Skype for Business shortly after acquiring Skype in 2011. As we can see with platforms like Teams and Copilot today, it was all-in. Three appsโPhone, Skype Video, and Messagingโwere included in Windows 10 version 1511 as part of a massive 2015 strategy to integrate Skype with Windows.
They weren’t even close to having the same features as the real Skype software, even though they were widely accessible on a non-beta version of Windows. They survived only until the following edition of Windows 10, which came out only eight months later, because they were so awful. The brand-new UWP Skype app was introduced by Microsoft with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, or version 1607.
Universal Windows Platform, or UWP for short, was the concept that you could create a single, responsive application that would work on all platforms. Naturally, that was the time when Windows would operate on a variety of devices, including phones and virtual reality headsets.
It seemed as though Skype’s fate was sealed in 2017 with the debut of Teams. Skype appeared to be fading away as Microsoft kept spending money on its new business-focused platform. Eventually, Teams gained a free tier and a “personal” version that effectively replicated Skype’s capabilities. When Windows 11 was released in 2021, it had Teams integration, which was similar to the Skype integration in Windows 10 version 1511. In the same way, it was finally exterminated.
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