The service that was sold to Microsoft for over 50 billion kronor in 2011 will now be shut down in May, Microsoft announces, reports CNBC.
Instead, the company is urging its users to use Microsoft's Teams app for their calls and contact lists from Skype can be transferred to Teams.
Skype was founded by Niklas Zennström and the Dane Janus Friis in 2003 and provided users with the opportunity to call each other through data traffic. The success was immediate and in 2004, the company had 11 million registered users, a year later, when the company was acquired by Ebay, the number of users had risen to 54 million, later increasing to over 400 million.
The financial crisis in 2009, however, hit Skype hard, and in 2011, the company was acquired by Microsoft for a price tag of over 50 billion kronor.
In recent years, however, Skype has led a dwindling existence as other free communication alternatives have emerged, such as Whatsapp or Facetime. CNBC also notes that Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella has not mentioned Skype at press conferences with investors since 2017.
