Microsoft retreats Skype in May, encouraging people to adopt teams

Skype logs off.

On Friday, Microsoft He announced that the 21-year-old call and message would be extinguished in May. The software company encourages Skype users to migrate to their free team.

Skype won attention in 2000 because he gave people a way to talk without paying a telephone company, but stumbled in the mobile age and did not enjoy a great re -re -rise. Some have forgotten that it is still available, given many other options for talking and calling.

“Over the years, we have learned a lot from Skype that we have put into teams as we have evolved teams in the last seven to eight years,” said Jeff Teper, president of the Microsoft 365 app and platforms for CNBC. “But we felt like it was time because we could be simpler for the market, for our user base and faster we can provide more innovation only focused on teams.”

Over the next few days, Microsoft will begin to allow people to report to Skype credentials teams, and Skype contacts and chats will be transmitted. People can also export their Skype data. The company will stop selling monthly subscriptions to Skype, and users with loans can continue to use them in teams.

“This is obviously a big, big moment for us and we are certainly very grateful in many ways,” Teper said. “Skype pined audio and video calls to web for many, many people.”

It’s one of the most striking digital brands.

In 2003, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, who had previously faced a program to share the Peer-Per Kazaa file sharing program, launched Skype in Estonia with the help of former classmates from zero experience in telecommunications. Initially, Skype was a tool for people to call each other for free. The miracle name was pledged to “Sky Peer to Peer”, a reference to the basic vote of the service through an online protocol or VOIP, architecture.

Skype quickly caught. By 2004, there were 11 million registered users. So far ebay announced a Plan to buy Skype Technologies with $ 2.6 billion in 2005, the number of users reached 54 million, and Skype expected $ 60 million in annual revenue, thanks to payments from those who wanted to call mobile phones and fixed lines.

Meg Whitman, at the time, Ebay Executive Director, imagined that Skype would help people finish the sale of products faster, especially expensive, connecting customers and sellers. And Ebay could charge additional for such calls. Skype users around the world could detect ebay and Paypalalso. The deal was completed 29 days later.

According to ebay, the Skype user number increased, exceeding 405 million by 2008, and the communication revenue increased. But then Whitman stepped down as an executive director, which set up a place for former Bain executive director John Donahoe, who did not think that Ebay basic companies had benefited from Skype transactions.

In 2009, the economy was in a recession, the growth of Ebay sales became negative, and the price price was lower than it was since 2001. statement who published a Skype app edition for Apple cider The iPhone, Donahoe has announced that Ebay will launch a starting public offer of Skype as part of the separation.

But ebay never applied for Skype IPO. Four and a half months after declaring the IPO strategy, eBay said it was reached an agreement Sell ​​a Skype investor group led by Silver Lake in a contract worth $ 2.75 billion. The internet auction operator received a 30% stake in Skype’s customer. Under the investor group, Skype applied for IPO, but that didn’t even happen. Microsoft finished acquiring Skype In 2011 for $ 8.5 billion and Ebay received over $ 2 billion.

“Microsoft and Skype together will gather hundreds of millions or, as Tony said, billions of consumers and strengthen them to communicate in new and interesting ways,” said Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, on A press conferenceReferring to the comments earlier at the event from Skype’s leader, Tony Bates. By that moment, 170 million people used Skype every month. Ballmer aimed to integrate Skype with several Microsoft products, including Lync, Windows Live Messenger, Windows Phone and Xbox Video Games. Microsoft also Skype launched his infrastructure of Azure Cloud.

Skype still failed to accumulate billion of active users.

Apple cider Native Imessage and FaceTime picked up towing on iOS devices. 2013., Facebook Bought WhatsApp, a mobile message exchange application and months later, users have gained the possibility of making calls across the borders. WhatsApp took off globally. Tencent’s Wechat did the same.

Skype, meanwhile, implemented more redesign and faced with criticism from the devotee. 2016 Microsoft Introduced the teams As a special “chat workpiece” for organizations with subscriptions to the Office Productivity software that would compete with Slack, which was the initial start then.

When Coid came and pushed people to work and learn from home, Zoomoriginally conceived for business use, he became Consumer favorite to hold a video call. People could also be connected to videos through services from CiscoFacebook and Google. Skype saw a blow to use, but Microsoft put the main engineering resources behind the teams for companies, governments and schools, and investments paid off. Analysts began to concentrate on the number of team users that Microsoft would discover, with the figure of more than 320 million in 2023.

As for Skype, Microsoft’s current executive director, Satya Nadella, has not mentioned him on the invitation of earnings since 2017.

2023. Microsoft said Skype had 36 million Daily active users. That was 40 million in March 2020. Teper refused to talk about how many people use the service today.

“I think good writing history would mark the transition to the mobile and cloud as a significant change in the communication category,” Teper said.

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