After nearly 22 years, Skype is shutting down today. I thought about writing something sentimental, something that really grasped how the service has played some role in every one of our lives. But that's not what this article is, because it would be disingenuous. Truthfully, I don't think I've ever met anyone that actually liked Skype.

The service was launched in August 2003 as a P2P calling platform. In 2005, it was purchased by eBay, and passed around a bit before Microsoft bought it up in 2011. But still, was it ever good, at least under Microsoft's tenure?

As far back as I can remember, "just blame Skype" has been a thing. When I worked at Neowin and used to communicate with colleagues over Skype, it was a running joke that we wouldn't receive notifications for new messages. Even in the era before FaceTime, video call quality was relatively poor, something that stood out immediately when Apple introduced a competing service.

Microsoft fumbled every step of the way

It just felt like misstep after misstep

Shortly after the firm acquired Skype in 2011, it killed off Windows Live Messenger and swapped out Lync with Skype for Business. It was all-in, something we see today with platforms like Teams and Copilot. In 2015, there was a grand plan to integrate Skype with Windows, building three apps into Windows 10 version 1511: Phone, Skype Video, and Messaging.

But despite being generally available on a non-beta version of Windows, they weren't even near feature parity with the actual Skype app. They were so bad that they only lasted until...the next version of Windows 10, which was released just eight months later. With the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, or version 1607, Microsoft released the all-new UWP Skype app.

UWP, for those that have already forgotten, stood for Universal Windows Platform, and the idea was that you could make one app with a responsive design that could run on all form factors. That was, of course, when Windows was going to run on multiple form factors, like phones, virtual reality headsets, and more.

The UWP app wasn't good either, and for a time, it lived side-by-side with what was commonly referred to as the Win32 app. This actually happened with a bunch of Microsoft apps, the most notable to me being OneNote. One of the really strange things about the UWP era was that you'd get these brand-new apps made for this new Windows platform, and they'd be promised to be the future, but they wouldn't do everything the original did. However, they did some things that the original didn't do, so there were pros and cons to each. The classic app was always in 'maintenance mode', while features were constantly added to the UWP app.

And then, one day, Microsoft started killing off UWP apps, despite pushing them on users for years. The Skype app today is the same one from before Windows 10, of course, not including the Windows 8 app. We won't get into Windows 8.

In all of that time, it seemed like nothing was being done to just make Skype work. I didn't care about some new app that was replacing an old app, or some old service that was now flying under the Skype banner. I just wanted a notification when my friend texted me.

Teams launched in 2017, and in many ways, it just felt like Skype but built for a business environment. Where Skype was competing with FaceTime, Teams was competing with Slack and Zoom.

Everything somehow got worse over time

New versions of Skype felt like Microsoft couldn't read the room

After Teams launched in 2017, it really felt like the writing was on the wall for Skype. As Microsoft continued to invest in its new business-centric platform, it seemed like Skype was falling by the wayside. Teams eventually got a free tier, and it also got a "personal" version, which essentially duplicated what Skype could do. In 2021 when Windows 11 launched, it came with Teams integration, reminiscent of the Windows 10 version 1511 Skype integration. Similarly, it was eventually killed off.

And then, Skype saw a resurgence in development. You can browse through the Skype blog to find a whole range of announcements for new features, visual overhauls, and more. When announcements like these happen, I promise you that Microsoft journalists were texting each other things like, "There are real people still actively developing Skype?" There were probably some references to Milton from Office Space.

As always, these updates never addressed the real underlying issues. It was all lipstick on a pig, so to speak.

Should Skype have won the video calling wars?

There's no timeline where this happened

I hear it all the time, that Skype should have been the thing everyone used throughout the 2020s instead of Zoom, and that Microsoft must have royally messed this up. While Microsoft most certainly did mess this up, I wholeheartedly disagree with the sentiment. For one thing, Teams is used by companies everywhere, and when you think of Teams as Skype for meetings, it's suddenly a solid win.

A long time ago, Skype used to be a verb, similar to how FaceTime is now. Microsoft definitely lost to Apple in that arena, but Skype was never a platform for meetings. It never competed with Slack for collaboration or Zoom for virtual meetings. It was essentially a video calling platform, for calling friends.

Back in the late 2010s, Dell used to put the webcam underneath the display on its XPS laptops. The idea was to make the experience as immersive as possible, prioritizing narrow bezels above all else. I'd ask about it at every briefing, and one day, they asked, "Well, when was the last time you used your webcam?" I didn't have an answer. Virtual briefings and meetings that feel so common today were unheard of back then.

Things changed in 2020, but by then, the thing competing with Zoom was Teams, not Skype.

Over the years, my communications with friends have moved to other platforms (usually Telegram), and my Skype is filled with spam messages and crypto scams. Good riddance.