23 ms·

Microsoft is killing Skype

• polskibus 2y ago
  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.
  • denysvitali 2y ago
    Yes, this is correct (AFAIK). I think they basically bought Skype to build "Skype Spaces" which is basically Teams. See the auth flow here: https://github.com/fossteams/teams-api/blob/master/notes/login-flow.md https://github.com/fossteams/teams-api/blob/master/notes/log... They have a "Skype Spaces" JWT that's being used for some parts of Teams
• thund 2y ago
  If true this will be another “we lost the browser war” “we underestimated mobile” story, and they will realize it only 10 years from now.
• ddingus 2y ago
  I really like Skype and have a ton of important contacts on it. Everyone is pissed, in our circles at least. I dislike Teams for ad hoc comms. We will have to pick something.. Not looking forward to that. SKYPE suddenly HAS TO HAVE YOUR PHONE NUMBER. Getting Microsoft accounts has to be why. Nope. We will pick something else.
• a_bonobo 2y ago
  It's amazing how much they dropped the ball during Covid. They already had everyone and everything in place! But the app is a buggy mess, far worse than Teams, and they just refused to do anything about it. I guess MS-internal politics? They had their own Teams and that was the preferred product?
  • notTooFarGone 2y ago
    The codebase is reportedly the biggest mess and impossible to navigate. In that light is just crystal clear why you would want to reinvent the wheel.
    • ratg13 2y ago
      They’ve rebuilt popular software many times over in the past. Even with Skype they rebuilt the entire backend as well when they moved it from a decentralized platform to a centralized platform. I struggle to believe that this theory holds any water. It also lends support to an old conspiracy theory that the primary driver for Microsoft buying Skype was so that the service could be centralized so that communications could be monitored and intercepted.
      • boznz 2y ago
        they had to rebuild it, original Skype was written in delphi
      • rhubarbtree 2y ago
        > They’ve rebuilt popular software many times over in the past. Ironically, I think this list includes Teams.
        • dijit 2y ago
          The calling functionality of Teams seems to be based on skype. (if strings, binary layout and even some subprocess names are to be believed)
          • EionRobb 2y ago
            Can confirm, as a Teams and Skype protocol reverse engineerer for Pidgin, that most of the Teams protocol including text messages started as Skype (not the decentralised one) and has had additional layers of stuff added over the years on top. The calling for both Skype and Teams still uses a websocket with a "reverse webhook" called Trouter, which lets the client respond to events as if it were a webserver responding to webhooks, and then does a handoff to WebRTC. When I first started writing the Teams protocol plugin for libpurple, it was easier to start with the Skype plugin than to start from scratch.
• ahartmetz 2y ago
  Oh no! Anyway... Signal seems fine as a replacement?
  • bamboozled 2y ago
    Can you make landline calls internationally with it for cheap ?
  • EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
    No, Signal is compromized. Set up your Matrix server.
    • amedvednikov 2y ago
      How is it compromised?
      • davidgerard 2y ago
        that's a troll
      • EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
        Signal is centralized, i.e. has a CEO and a bank account. Secondly, it is US based.
      • airhangerf15 2y ago
        Signal was likely funded by State. Open Whisper Systems has a lot of shady connections: https://www.kitklarenberg.com/p/signal-facing-collapse-after-cia https://www.kitklarenberg.com/p/signal-facing-collapse-after... https://yasha.substack.com/p/signal-is-a-government-op-85e https://yasha.substack.com/p/signal-is-a-government-op-85e https://bigleaguepolitics.com/court-docs-show-fbi-can-intercept-encrypted-messages-from-deep-state-backed-signal-app/ https://bigleaguepolitics.com/court-docs-show-fbi-can-interc... https://drewdevault.com/2018/08/08/Signal.html https://drewdevault.com/2018/08/08/Signal.html https://www.city-journal.org/article/signals-katherine-maher-problem https://www.city-journal.org/article/signals-katherine-maher...
    • deleted 2y ago
• mc3301 2y ago
  The verb "to skype" means "to video chat with someone" to many many people, in the same way "to google" means to look something up online. I don't even use skype, yet I say "I skyped my grandma on Sunday" and similar, using any number of other apps. It'll be a hard habit to break.
  • shermantanktop 2y ago
    I suggest continuing to use it. Your language habits are not the property of marketers and product managers. Now someday nobody will recognize the name and your meaning will no longer be clear. But until then Skype away, and use bandaids and Kleenex while you do it.
• AnonC 2y ago
  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.
  • jraph 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      If only SIP wasn't such a trashfire of non-interoperating impossible to configure garbage.
  • stampedbox 2y ago
    google fi
  • jszymborski 2y ago
    VoIP.ms
  • samsk 2y ago
    Try zadarma.com I've multiple numbers there
    • freetime2 2y ago
      Any issue receiving SMS messages with zadarma? In the past I have banks block numbers that come from VoIP providers.
• riffraff 2y ago
  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.
  • sky2224 2y ago
    > 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.
  • gloxkiqcza 2y ago
    Skype for Business UX > MS Teams UX
    • lmz 2y ago
      But Skype for Business isn't even Skype. Wasn't it just a rebranding of MS Lync?
      • MandieD 2y ago
        Yep. For the first few months after the rebranding, you could change a Windows registry setting to get the old Lync interface back.
      • fiverz 2y ago
        Lync because Skype for Business, yes.
        • bombcar 2y ago
          Which became Teams (somewhat). All the telephony side of Teams is very clearly Lync in a trench coat.
  • john_the_writer 2y ago
    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.
• ipnon 2y ago
  I can still hear the ringtone.
  • Gigachad 2y ago
    I can hear the Skype ringtone clear in my head despite not hearing it in years. But I can’t remember the Microsoft teams one despite hearing it multiple times today.
• misantroop 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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
• isaacremuant 2y ago
  MS was always going to kill Skype once they purchased it. One way or another. I remember how it ceased working on Linux once they bought it but I'm not sure whether it had to do with moving to centralised servers or if it had been moved from P2P long before.
  • chrismorgan 2y ago
    > I remember how it ceased working on Linux once they bought it I can’t speak for long ago, if that’s what you’re referring to, but the last two generations of the Skype client have run just fine on Linux. I’ve been using it for the last five years. My only real annoyance with it (that is, the Linux client rather than Skype problems in general, which have steadily got worse) is that it relies on an org.freedesktop.secrets implementation (e.g. gnome-keyring, kwallet) to stay logged in, and so because I stubbornly don’t have such a thing (I have no other software that wants such a thing, and I use Sway so anything will be poorly-integrated), I have to log in every time it restarts. And it’s really slow to start, badly-implemented web tech UI; twenty seconds to start and show the normal logged-in start screen, then it decides you’ve been signed out and takes you back to the login screen… all up, it tends to take almost a minute to start, including typing password. Except that some time in the last couple of months it broke further, and now freezes up for a minute before taking you to the login screen, in which it also requires you to enter username, not just password. So now it’s more like a solid two minutes of startup time, if you’re paying attention to it.
    • kennysoona 2y ago
      That all sounds like an issue with your particular setup more than with Skype. Just because that isn't how the Linux app works for most people at all.
      • chrismorgan 2y ago
        Which thing? Relying on keychain to stay logged in, or bad startup performance, or the most recent minute-long freeze? GNOME/KDE users should have a keychain running, so it won’t affect them. It’ll only affect people who roll their own stack a bit more. I don’t object to it using the keychain if it’s available, but refusing to keep you logged in if it’s absent is bad. Nothing else acts like that.
• fithisux 2y ago
  They can open source it.
  • Agraillo 2y ago
    Unless they also make the patents coming with it public, it would be of no use. As long as I remember, Microsoft has no good history of purchasing patents and making them public. Google has (vp7,vp8, Webm as an evolution). But probably some of the patents are expired anyway. I also doubt that they would open source the ported version (c# I suppose) but they could do this to the previous Delphi version, they developed many useful components so even without the core functionality, UI code might be useful for Lazarus/Delphi developers
    • fithisux 2y ago
      Lazarus guys will have a second new Year party.
• tomhoward 2y ago
  I just deleted it from my phone, yesterday. I haven't actively used it in I don't know how many years; maybe briefly last year when traveling o/s and needing to make a landline call to a number back home, but other than that, pretty much no use for years, and lately all I've been getting was crypto spam group chats. I remember how amazing it seemed when I was doing the "digital nomad" thing in the mid-late 00s, using Skype to redirect my landline number from home to my mobile (some Nokia thing, whatever was the best one for 20-somethings in 2006) with a local SIM as I caught buses around Thailand and Vietnam. It seemed so futuristic and exciting to be able to break free of the constraints of being stuck in one place - to travel around exotic places but still be connected to your work and contacts at home. That said, most of the calls I received on that trip were telemarketing nuisance calls, so, as always, the reality didn't quite live up to the fantasy. Still, looking back it feels like it was a more optimistic and wondrous time.
• dijit 2y ago
  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.
  • klohto 2y ago
    > 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.
    • sl-1 2y ago
      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 2y ago
        Microsoft did not buy or kill Nokia though.
    • caseyy 2y ago
      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.
• nneonneo 2y ago
  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.
  • rwmj 2y ago
    Especially an alternative that doesn't mean giving money to Google or using any Meta service.
  • pm3003 2y ago
    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 2y ago
    I use MobileVOIP, but voice quality and the probability of a call to connect is inferior to Skype.
    • dzhiurgis 2y ago
      30-50 cents per minute is very expensive.
      • EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
        Checked prices, Skype is more expensive.
  • apatheticonion 2y ago
    I'm in the same boat, I wonder if you can use the web interface from a 4g modem to make calls/send&recieve SMS messages. Could install a cloudflare tunnel on it and access it while abroad. I know you can do sms messages, but I'm not sure about calls. Perhaps an old Android phone could be used for this?
  • 2y ago
• edwcross 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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?
    • pm3003 2y ago
      SIP providers, such as Ippi.
    • EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
      I use MobileVOIP, but voice quality and the probability of a call to connect is inferior to Skype.
    • kombine 2y ago
      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.
    • dzhiurgis 2y ago
• wewewedxfgdf 2y ago
  I'll take it!
• john_the_writer 2y ago
  It lost all hope when it demanded the same login as windows. No longer could I have a semi-annon chat tool. I didn't want a "one password for everything" experience.
• blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  Amazing how neglected this service was considering Microsoft paid billions. Are there companies that do acquisitions well without killing the thing they acquire?
• caseyy 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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.
    • caseyy 2y ago
      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.
    • mrweasel 2y ago
      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).
    • grishka 2y ago
      > 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.
• fergie 2y ago
  Did Skype ever, like, actually work? I gave it a few chances over the years, but personally, despite living in an area with very fast broadband, it was always had quality issues. For me, Ichat and Hangouts always worked better.
  • bluescrn 2y ago
    Calls worked great for me, but it’s not been able to reliably show a contacts online status for years
  • seba_dos1 2y ago
    Skype worked well a decade before Hangouts even existed. It then went through Microsoft's "reinventions" that basically rebuilt it from scratch.
• tech234a 2y ago
  I agree that it’s not surprising, but I’d suspect that the name and a lot of the infrastructure will remain in various places. As others in the thread have pointed out, Teams appears to use a lot of Skype’s architecture. GroupMe is also still listed on the App Store with Skype as the developer, though their website lists Microsoft as the developer instead. GroupMe has seen recent feature updates, so I’d suspect it would be mostly unaffected. Interestingly enough, GroupMe still has a public API [1], so in that sense it is more open than Skype is these days. Also of note is that the Microsoft Account sign-in screen still accepts legacy Skype names as an alternative for an email address or phone number. It would be interesting if the ability to log into Microsoft Accounts this way outlives Skype itself. [1]: https://dev.groupme.com/ https://dev.groupme.com/
  • bsimpson 2y ago
    My day-to-day computers have always been Macs. My use of Windows has been relegated to occasional specific devices, like a TabletPC sketchbook or a 3D workstation. I don't think I'd touched Windows in more than a dozen years when I got a gaming handheld last year. It asked me for a Microsoft account (which I presumed I didn't have) or Skype. I took a guess at my old Skype credentials and proceeded with setup. I was both surprised and upset to discover that by username on the device was a 5 character truncation of my old Skype handle.
    • efreak 2y ago
      My user profile directory on my PC is `c:\users\efrea`, which is exceedingly annoying given my muscle memory typing out my username. I "fixed" this with a couple junction points (both `efreak` as used on my Linux systems, and my first name as was used on my previous Windows systems), because I frequently use RDP from my android tablet and autocorrect keeps changing it to my full username. This is the second annoyance after finding out early on that changing my username doesn't mean changing my profile directory name (at this point there's too much software and scripts with hard-coded paths, both locally and remote, to change it without leaving the junction). I would vastly prefer my username to be my usual username, with the display name being my real full name, but my Microsoft account apparently doesn't allow this (likely due to my privacy settings).
• _ink_ 2y ago
  What is the alternative to do cheap calls abroad?
  • EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
    I use MobileVOIP, but voice quality and the probability of a call to connect is inferior to Skype.
  • emrahcom 2y ago
    If both users are using Chrome, you may try my Chrome extension: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/eparto-virtual-phone/njihflnogjnjnmflicfongbnehhpkhmj https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/eparto-virtual-phon...
• silisili 2y ago
  Just a decade or so ago, 'Skype' was the 'Kleenex' of video calling. Funny how fast tech moves. Sad to see it go.
• logicallee 2y ago
  EDIT: I got this working, here is what AI can do for you today. It's only been 54 minutes since I posted the question at the end of this comment: http://taonexus.com/p2p-voice-video-chat.html http://taonexus.com/p2p-voice-video-chat.html It's p2p voice, video, and chat without logging. To use it send someone the link and your peer ID and they can connect to you and you can start chatting. In those 54 minutes I got it working on Chrome, Firefox, and mobile including Safari and Chrome, fixed emojis so it worked (I had to be in the loop for that and walk it through how to fix it). There are no analytics or recording, it just works. It totals 468 lines of code. Writeup about it: "How we made a Skype alternative in 45 minutes (video, voice, chat)." https://medium.com/@rviragh/how-we-made-a-skype-alternative-in-45-minutes-video-voice-chat-57d8bf42f88b https://medium.com/@rviragh/how-we-made-a-skype-alternative-... -- My original question: Question from the State of Utopia:[1] would you like a free State-run alternative? What you could expect if you say yes: our AI infrastructure can currently produce a total of about 1,000 lines of code, this is enough for us to get peer to peer person to person calling on mobile from a browser and Desktop, with voice, video, ephemeral chat that isn't saved at the end of the session, including emojis, and no address book, and no logging or recording or even analytics. We previously got peer to peer filesharing working with webrtc: https://taonexus.com/p2pfilesharing/ https://taonexus.com/p2pfilesharing/ it is buggy but worked for us, barely. We probably can't get multiple people in the same conversation, it could be too difficult for our AI. We can't build something as complicated as a browser (our attempt: https://taonexus.com/publicfiles/feb2025/84toy-toy-browser-without-markup.py.txt https://taonexus.com/publicfiles/feb2025/84toy-toy-browser-w... So don't get your hopes up, but we could get the basic infrastructure up, barely. Would that be of any benefit to anyone today? [1] The State of Utopia (which will be available at stateofutopia.com or stofut.com - St. of Ut. - for short) is a sovereign country with the vision of using autonomous AI that "owns itself" to give free money, goods, and services, to its citizens/beneficiaries - it is a country rather than a company because it acts in the interests of its citizens/beneficiaries rather than shareholders.
• DeathArrow 2y ago
  So they Nokia-ed Skype. RIP.
• DeathArrow 2y ago
  Now I really hope Microsoft buys Google.
  • esafak 2y ago
    Why??
    • airhangerf15 2y ago
      To facilitate both of their collapses?
• DeathArrow 2y ago
  It seems Microsoft is moving over from apps, desktop and mobile. Apart from developer tools, Office, Windows and some games, it seems they killed everything. Judging on how Windows releases seem to be degrading, I wonder if they will try to pull the plug from there, too.
• mid-kid 2y ago
  This makes me wonder, are my old chats still around? Is there any tool to back them up? Skype played a major role in my life for a good while, which I'd want to preserve.
  • seydor 2y ago
    yes you can download your skype chats https://secure.skype.com/en/data-export https://secure.skype.com/en/data-export
    • mid-kid 2y ago
      Thanks! I exported my data through this and it didn't take too long. Unfortunately this has the same issue as every other data export tool, in that it doesn't let you infer context in surrounding messages, it only saves yours. Also apparently chat logs didn't start being kept until sometime around 2017, most of my extensive skype use was around 2014, so I reckon it's all gone by now. Shame.
      • Liquid_Fire 2y ago
        Skype chats used to be peer-to-peer, so older history would only be kept locally by the client. If you have backups of your user/home directory from that time, it might be recoverable. IIRC they were stored in an SQLite database, so it's not too difficult to export them.
• indulona 2y ago
  [dead]
• thiscatis 2y ago
  "Teams for Consumers" The product name already is an omen on how "successful" this will be.
• drooopy 2y ago
  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.
  • bayindirh 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      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 2y ago
        > 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.
• globular-toast 2y ago
  When did "consumer" become a word used by marketing? It's a technical term from economics and a role that is played by everyone at various points in their lives. Calling people "consumers" seems distasteful and I think betrays how Microsoft thinks about their customers. "Teams for Home" would have been a much more obvious and nice name.
  • esafak 2y ago
    We should appreciate their honesty.
• puttycat 2y ago
  WhatsApp is now the de-facto planetary telephone network. The only problem is that it can't call landlines unlike Skype. Is there a replacement for this specific functionality?
  • robjan 2y ago
    Usually Viber
  • lotsofpulp 2y ago
    That has been one of WhatsApp’s strengths, as it allows it to avoid spam calls.
    • homebrewer 2y ago
      My friends and relatives get spam calls every single day. I don't use WA so I've no personal experience.
• SXX 2y ago
  Well this is really sucks. What other cheap and reliable real-phone calling services are there with working CallerID? Calling to airlines, banks and other institutions is still needed and I still use Skype for this from time to time.
• kleiba 2y ago
  Teams is a heavyweight behemoth with awful UX while Skype orginally had a very lightweight feel to it. Of course, Microsoft had to kill that through various UI "improvements". Also, Skype has an official Linux client. Instead of developing Teams (NIH at its best), they could have carefully developed Skype into a similar platform. But I'm not sure a giant like Microsoft is capable of something like this. But at least their 8.5bn investment wouldn't have been just to kill a competitor.
  • high_na_euv 2y ago
    >NIH at its best How do you know? Teams feel totally different from Skype, from design perspective
    • bombcar 2y ago
      Teams is just Skype for Business which was just rebranded Lync. They never were at all related to Skype which was based around p2p phone calls, not group chats or businesses.
    • rchaud 2y ago
      the design is a re-skin of Skype for Business. The app is way more bloated now, so there is an additional pane of options for things like team-only chats, task tracking etc
  • moltopoco 2y ago
    The award for the most absurd "UI improvement" must go to the Skype iPhone app that was painstakingly rewritten so that it felt like a Windows Phone app, complete with gestures that didn't make sense to iOS users: https://www.neowin.net/news/skype-for-ios-completely-redesigned-now-looks-more-like-windows-phone/ https://www.neowin.net/news/skype-for-ios-completely-redesig... It was actually technically impressive, just...why??
    • recursivecaveat 2y ago
      It's a funny kind of myopia that causes companies to generate 'consistency' in ways that only make sense internally rather from customers' perspectives. 100% of Skype on IOS users interact with other IOS apps, vs some considerably smaller amount use Skype on Windows Phone or even Windows Desktop. When the conventions disagree the choice should be obvious...
• g-mork 2y ago
  Agonizing to see this, but not for any current love of Skype. Redesigns killed it, and so obviously at the time were going to kill it. Redesigns like this kill trust and familiarity in a product, eventually the Microsoft account upsell meant I could not even log in using my Skype username at one point. I'm a tech person, imagine a mom'n'pop suffering the same.
• rgovostes 2y ago
  You can really tell they abandoned it by the lack of references to Copilot on the website.
  • DanielHB 2y ago
    Funny that written summaries of voice calls are actually a really useful feature. One of those easy wins of applying AI tech: unobtrusive and useful.
• palata 2y ago
  Feels like Google never built anything successful themselves after the Search engine (maybe GMail), but rather bought stuff that became successful (e.g. Google Maps). Conversely, Microsoft has built successful products (Windows, Office, ...), but it feels like whenever they buy something, they break it. Remember Nokia? That's probably wrong, but it's how it feels to me now :).
• kome 2y ago
  I have been using Skype to call my parents every week for the last 15 years... and i still do. It works!
• Macha 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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.
• nottorp 2y ago
  So the only option for ad hoc communication between groups of friends (as opposed to more formalized corporate communication) remains Discord?
• _7acn 2y ago
  Literally every messaging platform Microsoft has ever created has always been terrible, and that remains true to this day. The only exception was Skype, which used to be good, but after Microsoft acquired it, it also became terrible.
• loloquwowndueo 2y ago
  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).
• moomin 2y ago
  After 14 years of neglect, I still prefer it to Teams.
• axelthegerman 2y ago
  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
• dkyc 2y ago
  It's valid to think of this as Microsoft sort of squandering a unique opportunity to become the ubiquitous video conferencing standard by not investing in Skype, back when it had a market-leading position. Another way to look at this is that even though they bungled this, they still managed to become that solution through Teams. Even though they failed to compete with Skype, got leapfrogged by Slack, and then again by Zoom, they still manage to come out on top, at least in corporate America. You can argue that they could have been Zoom, too, but looking at Zoom's 22bn market capitalization I don't think Microsoft sheds many tears about that thought. It's more a testament to the incredible market power and distribution muscle Microsoft has, that they can afford this many bad decisions and still win in a way.
  • orev 2y ago
    The way Microsoft “won” with Teams was through monopolistic bundling it into Windows and Office. To this day most people don’t like using Teams for chat, but because it’s there by default there’s not a good reason to go through the hassle of bringing on another product.
    • basisword 2y ago
      >> To this day most people don’t like using Teams for chat People will say the same thing about Slack, email, and any other messaging system they are forced to use. People love to complain, especially if they're coming to a product after using a different one at a previous job.
      • remir 2y ago
        I don't know anyone who prefer Teams over Slack.
        • not_a_bot_4sho 2y ago
          I do. But anecdotal evidence isn't worth much.
        • 2y ago
• jpeeler 2y ago
  I just installed Skype this week to talk to someone using Skype's translation feature. And it mostly worked okay too. Any recommendations for other products that can do real time translation decently well for free? Related, I've found it difficult to also find a good phone app for handling in person interaction. Google translate is awkward to use with its requirement to specify the direction of the language and being geared towards shorter phrases rather than an entire continuous conversation.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• evanjrowley 2y ago
  "Embrace, extend, extinguish"
  • margalabargala 2y ago
    Considering that Microsoft has owned Skype for 14 years of its 22 year lifespan, I don't think that this applies here.
• jgalt212 2y ago
  I remember Skype being a big malware vector, and did my best to avoid. I do think MSFT cleaned this up, but the brand was ruined for me.
• PaulHoule 2y ago
  What's disappointing about it to me is that Skype has been my "mobile" telephone for more than 10 years. Upstate NY has cell phone dead spots in it bigger than some European countries but go to a gas station with a tablet and Skype and it works great.
• apatheticonion 2y ago
  I still use Skype to do international calls to my bank/tax office/government agencies when I am overseas. It's been indispensable, though their new model of buying a subscription rather than just having phone credits sucks
• alex1138 2y ago
  One thing that's really fun is getting inundated with spam from random accounts "user sent Translation Request"
• signa11 2y ago
  perhaps they can open-source it for great good ?
• DrNosferatu 2y ago
  What will happen to user's existing Skype credit?
• tverbeure 2y ago
  Well, that sucks. I still use Skype whenever I’m calling internationally to my mother’s land line. I still have $9 in credits. Skype is also a life saver when you’re abroad and need to call a US 1-800 number.
  • Scoundreller 2y ago
    Or in my experience, testing out some slight mis-dial 1-800 numbers to see what kind of fraud they take me to without it linking back to me). It’s fun: take the number on the back of your credit card or an airline and see what happens when you’re a number off or dial 800 instead of 888. (How big companies manage to get an 888 number while someone else squats the 800 for fraud is beyond me).
• ohples 2y ago
  Kinda hope they have a good way to migrate Skype numbers. I have one that I used sometimes when I don't want to give my real number. I have been meaning to look into alternatives. I think I can port it to some other provider, but haven't found one I liked.
• deleted 2y ago
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• Timpy 2y ago
  Back in the Windows 7 days I installed Skype on my parents computer before moving abroad, their user experience was basically like receiving a phone call. Even though they weren't tech savvy we never had any issues. I would call them, and if they were home and near the computer, they could answer it and we'd be video chatting. A year or so ago I found this to be impossible, there was no application for desktop that was as simple as receiving a phone call. My father has no smart phone. I sent him a zoom link via email but he couldn't log on to the family computer without getting blasted with UI updates, terms of service changes, "Do you want to use OneDrive?", "Here's what's new in Chrome", "Try asking Copilot anything!", etc. From his perspective the computer never worked the same way twice. I wish we had regulations that prevented buying out competition.
  • falcor84 2y ago
    On a related note, a bit over a decade ago I had installed logmein on my parents' computer to be able to easily help them with any IT issues. But they since pivoted away from personal accounts and I never found anything else as straightforward. I feel that in a lot of ways tech has regressed. EDIT: I just found that logmein actually offer a personal product again, named GoToMyPC, but what used to be entirely free at the time, is now priced at $35/month. [0] https://get.gotomypc.com/plansandpricing#feature-list https://get.gotomypc.com/plansandpricing#feature-list
    • Flameancer 2y ago
      It hasn’t regressed really, it’s just no longer free. Microsoft quick assist exist and allows you to connect to any pc with the users client code.
    • einsteinx2 2y ago
      Have you tried AnyDesk? It’s free for personal use and I think does what you’re looking for.
    • ThrowawayTestr 2y ago
      I use TeamViewer for remote support
• Pavilion2095 2y ago
  /me cires in Estonian
• greatgib 2y ago
  I can understand this decision because even my own Skype account is a ghost town unopened for few months. But it is really a giant asshole move to close that in only 2 months when the thing has existed for so many years and you are a big company and not bankrupt!! You might easily be caught by surprise (as I discovered that here and not even in the app) and lose valuable old conversations or contact info.
• timothygold 2y ago
  I'm surprised see Microsoft buying a competitor to only then shut them down at a later date. It's not like them at all to act like a Monopoly.
  • jeffwask 2y ago
    You had me there for a second. :)
• cratermoon 2y ago
  You'll get nothing that works and like it!
• lawgimenez 2y ago
  I’m still bitter with Microsoft shutting down Wunderlist.
  • addicted 2y ago
    How does MS ToDo compare to Wunderlist. It’s supposed to be the successor developed by the same team.
    • Reefersleep 2y ago
      Ticktick was the closest approximation at the time of Wunderlist shutdown. Still solid, but haven't researched the market recently. I don't remember details about the Microsoft version except it wasn't good enough.
      • lukaslalinsky 2y ago
        I highly recommend ticktick to anyone looking good tasks manager. It's one of those very few apps that just doesn't disappoint me and even though I have ADHD and hard time sticking to some system, I always come back ticktick.
• duxup 2y ago
  From my experience: Skype was pretty neat but always imperfect and throughout its history, including the Microsoft purchase, it just never could get out of its own way as a clunky piece of software. In many ways it reminds me of the awkwardness and clumsiness of Teams, with the exception that Skype never managed to capture the enterprise market.
• klausa 2y ago
  >Microsoft will honor existing Skype credits, but it will no longer offer new customers access to paid Skype features that allow you to make or receive international and domestic calls. This sucks for me; I used Skype for this regularly for dealing with paperwork/banks/etc back in my home country. What do people use instead? I know there's probably a bajillion of fly-by-night operations that offer this, but given that whenever I have to use an actual _phone_, I'm probably dealing with a bank, the tax office or some other governmental entity — I'd prefer something where I'm not worried about my calls being intercepted.
  • magamig 2y ago
    I've started using Viber, but it's full of ads and more expensive
• gigel82 2y ago
  Teams for consumers / home / whatever they're calling it doesn't even support audio calls or video calls (not even 1:1). It can literally only do text chats. I'm not sure what Microsoft is doing here, except admitting they don't care at all about the consumer market (except to advertise to / data mine).
  • soundnote 2y ago
    It definitely supports both audio and video calls.
• bloomingkales 2y ago
  What happened? It's kind of hard to fuck up a chat app. The Skype ring tone is iconic.
  • grandpoobah 2y ago
    Don't forget MSN Messenger was discontinued/merged into Skype. So they fucked it not once, but twice. Literally handed over their dominant position in instant messaging for nothing.
    • skeeter2020 2y ago
      Wait - what about MS Lync/Office Communicator? I don't remember if that was just a branding change of "MSN Messenger for Business" about the time right before the Skype acquisition, or folding in (and failing with) yet another IM/Video chat solution. So should the count actually be three?
      • VyseofArcadia 2y ago
        That's Teams. MS Lync was rebranded as "Skype for Business" which was then rebranded as Teams.
      • sjm-lbm 2y ago
        Yeah, it's actually three, though only from a branding perspective. They did rebrand Lync/Office Communicator as "Skype for Business" for a bit, though I don't think there was ever any code shared and it was just a branding thing. Honestly I think they simply don't care, and from their perspective they finally have gotten it right with Teams.
  • akgoel 2y ago
    It was a p2p phone and video call app that Microsoft purchased when mobile phones started to take off. Phones cannot participate in a p2p network the same way a desktop can, so it had to be re-architected to use central servers, and they never got it to work the same after that.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• ChrisArchitect 2y ago
  Another Ars [dupe]
• Oarch 2y ago
  It's Teams now isn't it? Some of the links generated by teams still have the word Skype in them.
  • bilekas 2y ago
    I'm not 100% sure but I suspect the canibalised the skype protocol in some capacity for Teams.
  • ziml77 2y ago
    As far as I know, Teams evolved from their business product. Which went through multiple rebrands in a short time span, including Skype for Business.
  • johannes1234321 2y ago
    Teams was "Skype for business" which besides branding had little to do with Skype.
• basisword 2y ago
  This is such great news. I had to communicate with clients and in some European countries Skype is expected. It's used for group instant messaging and it is awful compared to Slack/Teams. These users absolutely refuse to move off it so glad to hear they will have no choice. Skype sucked 10 years ago. With the vast array of better options available it sucks immeasurably more now.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• legitster 2y ago
  Skype is the epitome of technical debt. Millions of lines of code for a service that isn't technically difficult to provide anymore. When I was at Microsoft, I was told working on Skype was about as popular as being sent to a gulag. The value of the brand is so strong, I am surprised they never launched a "2.0" version built from scratch and without all the vestigial tails.
  • Someone 2y ago
    “Skype for Business” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype_for_Business https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype_for_Business) sort-of was that. It put the “Skype” brand on “Lync”, which was a rebranded “Office Communicator” (IIRC, there were some technical changes along the line, too, but I may misremember that) It got replaced by Teams.
    • legitster 2y ago
      And Skype had to maintain compatibility with many of these services that came and went.
  • iLoveOncall 2y ago
    > The value of the brand is so strong, I am surprised they never launched a "2.0" version I am not. The brand is strong in a negative way, I have never met anyone who ever liked Skype.
    • hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
      Then my guess is you're not old enough to have used it much when it first came out. Because at that time, it wasn't really competing with other internet calling services, it was competing with international phone rates that were dollars a minute. In some cases it actually made long distance relationships viable that otherwise weren't.
    • manuelabeledo 2y ago
      I have. Skype was very popular in many places around the world.
• pavel_lishin 2y ago
  Great. Really not looking forward to helping my grandmother migrate, and possibly a bunch of her friends.
• Insanity 2y ago
  Long time coming. The only one in my social group who still used it was my wife - and just for the function to call regular phones. Calling family in the US/MX from EU was pretty cheap with the Skype credit option.
• linwangg 2y ago
  I still use Skype, mainly out of habit, but I guess it's finally time to move on. Telegram seems like the best alternative for me, but I wonder—what are others switching to? Feels like every few years, we have to migrate to a new chat platform.
  • concerndc1tizen 2y ago
    Telegram requires permission to view all your contacts on iOS :) So I refuse to use it now.
    • linwangg 2y ago
      That’s fair, but almost every messaging app does this (WhatsApp, Signal, iMessage, etc.). The question is: do you trust Telegram more or less than the alternatives? Personally, I see it as the lesser evil compared to some big tech options.
      • RandallBrown 2y ago
        WhatsApp doesn't require contact permissions to work. Neither do other apps I use for messaging like Facebook Messenger, Instagram, or Snapchat. iMessage sort of does, but that's only because it's more a part of the OS, which already has your contacts anyway.
        • renata 2y ago
          Signal also doesn't (on IOS at least), I just set it up for my parents and it asks for specific contacts.
  • doublepg23 2y ago
    I find telegram is amazing for meeting people you don’t already know, especially in group chats or for having slightly more anonymity. Signal is great if you already know everyone you’re talking with and don’t really care for large group chats (100s of anonymous strangers).
• lbourdages 2y ago
  Anyone knows of an alternative to Skype to make free calls to 1-800 numbers? I was keeping Skype in my back pocket during trips abroad for that exact reason (allowed me to get away with using data only eSIMs and still be able to call bank/airline if something happens).
  • pcl 2y ago
    Google Voice is pretty cheap for that use case.
    • lbourdages 2y ago
      Not available in Canada sadly.
  • bloomingkales 2y ago
    It's not free but you can try the Burner app.
  • asah 2y ago
    if you don't call 800-numbers often, it's a tiny economic cost...
  • jesterson 2y ago
    This. And most importantly for me, Skype allowed to call using my numbers (for bank it will look like i am calling from my cell). Any other voip service would just put random number which will trigger additional security checks. Would love to hear about service doing that
    • jalk 2y ago
      My banks mobile app has a Call Helpdesk button, which simply dials the support number with ',,,<long random number>' appended. That gets you into the fast-track queue and they don't need to ask any security questions as they know it's you. They don't look at the dialing number at all.
  • smjburton 2y ago
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• ACS_Solver 2y ago
  I'm still using it after starting on one of the early Skype versions. At over 20 years, it's lasted me longer than ICQ, IRC or an other messenger. Most of my contacts no longer use Skype but it's the primary way I contact my family and I can't think of an obvious replacement that would fully satisfy my use case.
• WinstonSmith84 2y ago
  hopefully next is Teams. Microsoft gave up building browser engine and for everyone's sanity they shall also try to stop building chat applications. Arguably Slack has its issues, but it's a world apart in terms of usability, UX, UI, etc.
• dvh 2y ago
  How will I check if my mic is working now?
  • jjice 2y ago
    I assume this was a joke, but if you do want an actual way, I always used Audacity for audio tests. https://www.audacityteam.org/ https://www.audacityteam.org/
  • ascorbic 2y ago
    zoom.us/test
  • Alifatisk 2y ago
    I'm gonna miss her
• makesomething 2y ago
  [dead]
• whatever1 2y ago
  Are there any reliable alternatives for international landline/mobile calls?
• LinuxBender 2y ago
  Microsoft have not sent me an email about this. I still have $120 credit on Skype and a Skype-In number. Curious if they will give the credit back to me. [Edit] My question was answered here [1]. [1] - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2025/02/28/the-next-chapter-moving-from-skype-to-microsoft-teams/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2025/02/2...
• tombert 2y ago
  Damn, this is the primary way I talk to my parents and my grandmother. Genuine question, what do people here recommend as a replacement for non-technical people? I'll need to walk my grandmother through the process of setting something remotely. No one in my family but me has iPhones, so I think Facetime is out, and I'd need something that can run on a computer. I suppose I'll have to talk my parents into installing Signal desktop, but I was kind of hoping for something that gave you the "user is online" status thing like Skype does.
  • sumitgt 2y ago
    Why not just use something like Google Meet? You send a link and the other person just needs a browser. It's a pain to deal with syncing issues on Signal Desktop.
  • jjice 2y ago
    Google Duo (might be lumped in with Meet now) worked well for me when I was on Android and everyone around be was iOS. It's cross platform and worked out of the box. Discord probably has a bit more going on since it also has a community focus, but it may be worth looking into since it's a platform that won't be going away anytime soon. It also works from the browser if having them download something is a headache.
    • darrylb42 2y ago
      Google Duo is gone. The functionality has moved to Meet, causing much confusion for non-technical users and annoyance for everyone.
      • tracker1 2y ago
        I miss when Hangouts had all the functionality in one app. Google's stupid bonus incentives just killed it all.
  • aaomidi 2y ago
    I gave my grandmother an old iPad I had. It’s been amazing. She’s also in Iran, so it’s one of the only services that somehow the govt doesn’t target when killing video call apps.
• kobalsky 2y ago
  Been using Skype Manager to handle numbers for a few accounts in our business. I haven't found info if it will be possible to migrate these numbers to Teams. Does anyone have info about this?
• Juliate 2y ago
  Will we ever have communication tools more durable and predictable (with known and managed failure modes and privacy expectations) than paper mail? Standardised protocol? independent of any single entity or subscription? readable without special technology? universal service infrastructure?
  • kjkjadksj 2y ago
    That is called email
• bee_rider 2y ago
  Skype’s peer-to-peer architecture seemed like an interesting idea. I mean that’s the sort of thing the internet was supposed to facilitate, distributed communications. Of course MS screwed it up pretty quickly after buying it, and the name has been a mockery of it’s former potential for much longer than it was an actual thing. RIP Skype, we never met you.
  • zero_shift 2y ago
    I forgot about that. It used to create a lot of issues in a shared house I once lived in, we had a housemate who left Skype running and flooded our router with junk packets.
• Kapura 2y ago
  Absolutely wild that the entire world got locked inside their homes and everybody became a remote worker and that wasn't enough for Skype or Teams to get used. Embarrassing! and this is the end result.
  • zdragnar 2y ago
    I used Teams through most of lockdown. The developers were all on macs, and used slack for chat, so the only feature of teams we used was for the daily stand-up video call. The desktop app ran very poorly on macs, and left everyone pretty much blaming it whenever their Mac acted up. I only used the website version myself, and it was fine, so I'm assuming there was just some hanky programming in an election wrapper that needed optimizing.
  • orev 2y ago
    They forgot Skype existed and everyone used Zoom. Then Microsoft scrambled and used their monopoly power in Windows to force Teams on everyone. Teams was not a thing until at least half a year into the pandemic.
• jjice 2y ago
  Lots of good times on Skype in high school. Plenty of 12 hour calls on that service for free, and I really appreciate that it was a thing. It was really solid for the time. We had so much fun buying $10 of Skype credit when we finally were old enough to get jobs and then prank calling people over Skype. Very juvenile, but that's what we were. Thankfully, P2P calling and video calling in general is a solved problem now with web standards included. I'm glad Skype was there when it was.
• java-man 2y ago
  Are they going to refund the existing credit?
• TuringNYC 2y ago
  When Microsoft took it over, I lost the ability to log in. Despite having many paid credits on the system. There were numerous issues like -- you couldnt log in if you already had a microsoft account under the same email in some cases.
• yeyeyeyeyeyeyee 2y ago
  That's unfortunate, I was still using as a cheaper option for international calls to landlines. Is there any good EU alternative for this specifically ?
  • ascorbic 2y ago
    I recently signed up for Vyke when I couldn't get Skype to work for international calls. Worked well for me. https://www.vyke.com/ https://www.vyke.com/
• btown 2y ago
  This reminds me of how Yahoo Messenger was silently a significant part of the oil trade, and its shutdown may have subtly made the industry more opaque: https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/oil-traders-prepare-fond-farewells-to-yahoo-messenger-idUSKCN10J0SO/ https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/oil-traders-prepa... I have no doubt that we'll see stories about niche industries still built on the backs of Skype that are scrambling to adapt. Nowadays, I suppose it's likely a rounding error compared to other ways that geopolitical forces are disrupting various industries... but we should all be aware of the implicit commitment we make to users when releasing any B2C service, and how people will build entire livelihoods around the simplest of services in ways we can't anticipate.
• rnikander 2y ago
  I just used Skype the other day. I still find it useful for certain things. Is it that these companies can't maintain a piece of software unless they see a way for it to grow and dominate the world?
• ChrisArchitect 2y ago
  There's the official post: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2025/02/28/the-next-chapter-moving-from-skype-to-microsoft-teams/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2025/02/2...
• logicallee 2y ago
  if you're looking for an immediate alternative, the State of Utopia has just bootstrapped this p2p alternative using WebRTC. It supports voice, video, and chat and has no logging, recording, or analytics of any kind: http://taonexus.com/p2p-voice-video-chat.html http://taonexus.com/p2p-voice-video-chat.html
• pjs_ 2y ago
  I liked it when they made all the lines wiggly
• foogazi 2y ago
  Why not use AI to make Skype successful? Not adding AI, but have AI design, and execute the steps to turn Skype into a successful product
• Scene_Cast2 2y ago
  Is there a good alternative with high-bandwidth, high-quality video? I just tried Discord, Telegram, and Element - they all compress their video quite noticeably into a blurry mush.
  • bombcar 2y ago
    Zoom has some settings for HQ and “musician audio”. But to really do it right you need something designed for recording high quality - like riverside.
• jdlyga 2y ago
  Every time I'm forced to use Teams it's a chore. I was trying to find a way to set a virtual background or change camera settings, and it looks like it's only available right before you join a meeting. It's wild.
  • sznio 2y ago
    >I was trying to find a way to set a virtual background or change camera settings, and it looks like it's only available right before you join a meeting. Huh. I used Teams in 2020-2023 and back then you'd just hover over the enable/disable camera button and the settings would show up.
  • sleepyfran 2y ago
    It's not, you can do that under the video settings if you hover over the camera icon on the calling screen, or there's a device settings buried under the overflow menu as well. Haven't used Teams in a while, but I doubt it changed now.
• igorguerrero 2y ago
  Oh man I actually use it to get a US phone number... What's a better alternative for this? I like skype cause you can request a new one every time you wanted.
  • Scoundreller 2y ago
    it’s not as user friendly, but VoIP.ms is cheap and powerful.
    • igorguerrero 2y ago
      Thanks I'll give it a shot! 0.85/month is CHEAP!
• hermitcrab 2y ago
  Skype was great, until M$ bought it, and then it was all downhill. For some reason they removed the ability to have a personalised answerphone message. Why? Any suggestions for an equivalent VOIP service? Something simple and cheap so I can have a phone number on my website that rings on my computer + has an answerphone for missed calls.
• ein0p 2y ago
  Seems unwise. I'd at least try to sell it instead. It's a very popular brand still. You don't just "kill" things like that - brands are very difficult to build.
  • orev 2y ago
    The user base is what’s valuable, and Microsoft wants them moving to Teams. Selling it would undermine that since they would lose the users.
    • ein0p 2y ago
      I don't think anyone would willingly move to that turd. Anyone who has to be on it is already on it.
• DonHopkins 2y ago
  Bring back CU-SeeMe! ;)
• qingcharles 2y ago
  Looks like this is the address to export your chat history: https://go.skype.com/export https://go.skype.com/export
• codedokode 2y ago
  New messengers are worse than old ones. You could sign up for Skype using just login and password and for modern messengers you need to provide at least a phone number, and if the trend continues tomorrow they will start requiring biometric data I assume.
• insane_dreamer 2y ago
  It's amazing to think that there was a time when Skype was literally synonymous with web-based calls and text chat. It was a verb, like googling. First eBay (was always a terrible fit), then Microsoft (which could have made it the defacto standard), lost the plot.
• quitit 2y ago
  Microsoft has sent out this email: Dear Skype user, In order to streamline our consumer communications offerings, we will be retiring Skype in May 2025. As part of this change, we want to keep you informed about important updates to your Skype paid services and how these changes may affect you. Please read on for detailed information about the updates and what they mean for your services. Subscriptions & Automatic Top-Ups: Existing subscriptions will continue to automatically renew until April 3, 2025. After this, all subscriptions will be retired and no longer be available for purchase, renewal, or reactivation. Automatic top-ups will end on April 3, 2025. Skype Number: Your Skype Number subscription will continue to automatically renew until April 3, 2025 and will remain active until the end of your next renewal period. To port your Skype Number, please contact your new provider directly. Learn more Skype Manager: Skype Manager users can purchase and renew paid products, including automatic credit top-ups, until April 3, 2025. After this date, only existing credit balances can be allocated to group members for calling. For SMS services: SMS services will be discontinued on May 5, 2025. Skype Dial Pad: After May 5, 2025, the Skype Dial Pad will be available to remaining paid users from the Skype web portal and Teams, where you will continue to be able to use your subscription or Skype Credits. Terms of Use: Skype paid products are subject to the Microsoft Services Agreement. Thank you for being part of Skype We want to express our deepest gratitude for your support over the years. Skype has been an integral part of countless meaningful moments, and we are honored to have been part of your journey. Learn more about Skype retirement here. With gratitude, The Skype Team
  • rwky 2y ago
    Thanks for this I've not received the email yet. This bit is irritating >To port your Skype Number, please contact your new provider directly. Learn more Anyone got any recommendations on who to port to?
    • mcyukon 2y ago
      I have a number with VOIP.ms, which I use with Softphone app Zoiper5. I'm going to attempt to transfer my Skype number over. VOIP.ms has a "availability" tool and it indicates its possible to port it.
    • 2y ago
• dabinat 2y ago
  I feel like I’m one of the few people still using Skype. I’m using the feature where you can rent an international local phone number and people can call you on that number and it forwards to your phone (my family live abroad). I’ve been looking and I’m struggling to find services with this feature that aren’t 3x+ the price. Skype seems to be unique in that it’s aimed at consumers and most of those other services seem to be aimed at businesses (that could be a factor in why it failed). Can anyone make any recommendations?
  • zamadatix 2y ago
    I don't have any recommendations. I used to have a number like this but it seems anything aimed at being cheap and for individuals ends up attracting a bunch of nefarious use for the volume of legitimate use which ends up making the service not worth running for the provider. As such, I gave up trying to find one to stick with.
  • anter 2y ago
    If you have some tech skills and want something truly cheap, set it up directly with twillio, they have a basic scripting thing that can allow you to forward calls and such (chatgpt can help there) and the numbers are at something like a dollar a month iirc.
• jimnotgym 2y ago
  Killed Skype? Didn't it just merge into Teams?
• issafram 2y ago
  I remember loving Skype before Microsoft bought it. I started using it very early on. It was amazing. I remember they had something like public groups (I forget the name). Think of it like a Twitter Space. I was in there every day. Some people might remember "his highness from India". Good times arguing and listen to others argue with him.
• upcoming-sesame 2y ago
  I use Skype for online language classes. The good thing is that the chat window is persistent for the contact (unlike Google Meet). That means I can go back in history during a call and see the previous notes
  • homebrewer 2y ago
    I already mentioned it under another comment (so I probably look like a shill), but Telegram also has this functionality, all wrapped in a native (C++/Qt) and relatively efficient desktop client.
• mihaaly 2y ago
  They bought it to murder anyway. Consciously or cluelessly, does not matter to me. It was so sad seeing it becoming that useless piece of junk not resembling the Skype grew to be the centerpiece and workhorse of my communications, business and personal alike in its prime time. I was mad about this incompetent giant ruining it little by little, sometimes with a big hit to its stomach. RIP Skype, years and years ago. Only nostalgy left it on my desktop, and two (one plus one) rare contacts. Everything dies, then rots away slowly, it was painful to see that for Skype it happened not in this order.
• bigpeopleareold 2y ago
  My wife and I still use Skype, primarily for chat, but sometimes video calls. I had Skype Credits, but I don't really need that anymore. The service has definitely degraded (like it couldn't deliver text in a timely manner frequently), but we never switched because despite its faults, it was comfortable enough. No way in hell I am going to use that garbage Teams. I am stuck using it at work and loathe it. This motivates to find a Free Software alternative to this.
  • joshvm 2y ago
    Skype is still good as a video client, but where they really screwed up was chat history. The only way you can recover old messages is to infinite scroll until you get to the point you need. Search is largely useless. WhatsApp desktop is a perfectly usable alternative, and chat is good - you can save to a file, media is automatically backed up if you want.
• Scoundreller 2y ago
  Unfortunately, Skype was an easy way for people to easily call toll-free US and Canadian numbers while overseas for free. (E.g. need to call an American airline or rental car company while abroad). Sometimes the local numbers would cost you money to call (or were only available during business hours and in the middle of the night for you, it may be daytime hours in North America).
• user9999999999 2y ago
  Monopolies are holding back innovation in the US, and I think we will start seeing the affects of which in the next decade or so
• florbnit 2y ago
  I honestly didn’t even know Skype was still alive I’m surprised it’s around to kill. MS Teams is so cemented in my own any anyone I knows world that it’s funny to think back on the days where Skype was here and everyone hated it.
• r0ckarong 2y ago
  I don't understand why killing a "brand" you own is so important. Just repackage the existing product you mean to keep around and call it something else. How many other industries are ruled by rebranded bullshit that does what they used to and now overcharge by factor X? Stop killing, make zombies work.
• squirrel6 2y ago
  Sure but since most of its components have been Frankensteined into MS Teams it lives on right?
• almostdeadguy 2y ago
  RIP longmont potion castle
• lxgr 2y ago
  Skype (the original product/service, before Microsoft's corporate hug of death) was an amazing piece of technology. It was pre-cloud in every aspect, not only using P2P for actual VoIP traffic but also for contact list management and node discovery (via DHT and promoting random people's PCs to act as core nodes! Opening up Wireshark on my laptop when on fast university Wi-Fi with a public, unfirewalled IP was quite the experience). It was also available literally everywhere: Linux, the Sony PSP, Nokia's Linux-based "internet appliance/tablet" series, Symbian smartphones, cordless landline phones in some countries... I've long since moved on, but I do have some very fond memories of it being a lifeline to friends and family when backpacking and studying abroad in a time of horrendously expensive international/roaming calls. Rest in peace!
  • timewizard 2y ago
    > before Microsoft's corporate hug of death Abuse of the law to buy a competitor, form a monopoly, and then price fix an entire market. It sounds cute when you say "hug of death" almost like they didn't intentionally seek out this precise outcome. > It was also available literally everywhere Funny how that was literally the first thing to get the axe. I guess some "hugs" are like that, huh? > Rest in peace! Justice for Skype!
    • Liquix 2y ago
      but m$ doesn't have a monopoly on video/instant chat? teams is so objectively bad that anyone who was using skype will move on to a different company's product
      • timewizard 2y ago
        That they failed to successfully profit from their crime does not obviate it from being criminal. Skype was created in 2003, I do hope it's appreciated how much smaller the market was back then, on top of how bandwidth constrained it was. On Hacker News of all places what I think gets lost in the monopoly conversation is that it's not just the consumer market you need to pay attention it's the _labor_ market. I always assumed that would more be more readily apparent here. I am often surprised to find out it is not.
• Gualdrapo 2y ago
  imho Skype wasn't the only huge opportunity Microsoft had to win space in the internet - and it wasn't only Messenger, but their social space they had along with it. In there you could post statuses (even with pictures!) and people could comment on those. Sound familiar...?
• buyucu 2y ago
  Microsoft killed Skype years ago.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• 29athrowaway 2y ago
  How do you make phone calls then?
• LeoPanthera 2y ago
  Ask HN: What app do I use for cheap international telephone calls, to actual telephone numbers, now?
  • supertrope 2y ago
    Service: https://www.Callcentric.com https://www.Callcentric.com, https://www.VoIP.ms https://www.VoIP.ms, https://www.Anveo.com https://www.Anveo.com. Client app: Groundwire, Bria.
• ggm 2y ago
  Possibly the first good double NAT agile protocol in widespread uae
• yokoprime 2y ago
  I still have clients who run Skype for Business on premises. It feels so ancient when I have to use it.
• inetknght 2y ago
  Microsoft killed Skype when they removed its peer to peer architecture.
  • tokioyoyo 2y ago
    I keep seeing this comment in the thread, but I don’t really understand it. Sure, p2p is cool for us engineers. But why the end user ever cares about it? Microsoft’s purpose is to sell the product to as many customers as possible. If the decision was made to axe the architecture to increase the sales… it’s not the wrong decision? For us, tech snobs, we can always find an alternative anyways.
    • inetknght 2y ago
      > Sure, p2p is cool for us engineers. But why the end user ever cares about it? Skype really was the killer communication app with the killer feature: voice and video over IP, for free. It offered paid calling (for a fairly reasonable if not particularly low price), even international. End users (other than gamers or enterprise) cared about privacy and decentralization. Not many end users, but perhaps many who made recommendations to their peers about what VoIP software to use. At the time, the main competition was MSN (terrible UX, later merged into Skype), TeamSpeak/Ventrilo/Mumble/RogerWilco (focused on gamers and generally terrible UX), or enterprise-focused SIP software. Later came FaceTime (Apple-only), Facebook Messenger (privacy invasive), WhatsApp (after Facebook, and basically the same as Facebook Messenger these days), Telegram (Russian spyware), and Signal (not popular).
      • tokioyoyo 2y ago
        All the things that came later killed Skype’s business. We might not like them, but clearly average person has made different choices.
• cm2187 2y ago
  The news is that skype wasn’t already dead
• dwedge 2y ago
  Is there a replacement for my use case? Essentially I have two Skype numbers in different countries, and use Skype to receive/forward calls and also to dial out from them to those countries. It never worked great to be honest, and I don't care about losing the numbers, but I'd like the functionality.
• oloila 2y ago
  Thats it. Public companies only think about their shares price and KPI. Only private/startup companies can build nice piece of software and have good product. Enterprise can only be fat and ugly
• aucisson_masque 2y ago
  When I started my business, i needed a voip phone number and was already in Microsoft ecosystem so I went with Skype. It was a freaking mess. And expensive on top of that. Couldn't believe how people were paying for Skype number services. A few years later, i can't believe how people are paying for any Microsoft service and how this company isn't already dead. If there wasn't for the os quasi monopoly with windows that behave like a platform on top of which they can promote office software, onedrive and so on, Microsoft wouldn't be making any money with it's software. It's absolutely pathetic.
• xyst 2y ago
  Something needs to kill Microsoft.
• vinhnx 2y ago
  I will miss Skype. It has a special place in my memory.
• brailsafe 2y ago
  That's kind of a shame, although the product has obviously been neglected, I still used it on mobile to make local calls over wifi while I'm travelling internationally. The app is... rough, but it gets the job done.
• prinny_ 2y ago
  I am still lowkey mad about how Microsoft handled Skype. They acquired a great piece of tech that was widely popular and used and they straight up butchered it. I was unable to fathom why version 7.2 dropped lists, when up at this point I was able to create lists of my contacts. I could not understand why when searching for someone using their name, the search results would show me people from other countries sharing a same name before showing me the person from my contact list. They bought it to degrade it and then destroy it, so that they could push for Teams. It worked, but from a consumer's perspective that was just disheartening.
• golemiprague 2y ago
  [dead]
• remir 2y ago
  The P2P aspect of Skype was really interesting. I remember there were even physical handsets you could buy that had Skype built-in, which I thought were cool. I remember seeing business cards with Skype username on them also. That's how popular the thing was! It's honestly baffling how we're still relying on old PSTN/phone numbers to reach people in 2025.
• southernplaces7 2y ago
  Microsoft first completely ruined Skype in its usual way of implementing user-hostile nonsense, forcing you to integrate with the rest of its bullshit login system to use the app, and generally making what used to be a wonderfully smooth, useful communication platform into a mostly useless mess. This latest news is just a very outdated obituary to a long-since applied death sentence that started the day the company pointlessly bought Skype.
• pubgrub 2y ago
  I used it only to call landline numbers in foreign countries. Is there any alternative today to do this?
• johndavid9991 2y ago
  Over a week ago, I was trying to top-up my Skype Credits but I can't find that option anymore. Then I saw this news. It's their product, it's their decision, but I just want to say, it used to be a really good product. Skype brings a lot of good memories of the early days of online work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsUyjzRIU9w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsUyjzRIU9w - play it, thank me later.
• weiliddat 2y ago
  Was looking for alternatives (maybe DIY) and found this repo: https://github.com/eric-brechemier/how-i-replaced-skype-with-twilio https://github.com/eric-brechemier/how-i-replaced-skype-with...
• ztetranz 2y ago
  I use Skype for cheap international phone calls so I'm looking for a replacement. I have't tried it yet but Viber looks promising.
• catlover76 2y ago
  [dead]
• TedHerman 2y ago
  This is a response to search query of a related topic (I know it doesn't directly address the topic of the posting). Cisco has a reputation for sometimes "killing" companies it acquires by discontinuing successful products from those companies after integrating them, most notably exemplified by the case of the "Flip" video camera, which Cisco purchased and then quickly shut down despite its popularity, often citing strategic alignment with their core networking business as the reason for such decisions; this practice has led to criticism of Cisco's acquisition strategy, where some argue they prioritize short-term financial gains over the long-term potential of acquired companies and their products.
• Friedduck 2y ago
  Teams has never been as good as Skype at calls, even in the very early days. I was shocked at how good Skype was when my son called a friend in a French village where he was an exchange student. The quality rivaled the best local calls on a landline. Teams still feels disjointed and awkward, is slow as hell, and manages to make the simplest tasks (adjusting volume) incredibly difficult.
• Smokey420 2y ago
  Like CrossLoop yrs. Back buy it, to miss manage, then kill it...it was competition