Skype opened for public use on August 29, 2003, built by the Kazaa team — Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu, and Jaan Tallinn — for Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis. It used peer-to-peer routing to make voice and, from 2005, video calls free between computers anywhere with an internet connection, undercutting international phone rates and turning webcam calling into something ordinary people actually did. eBay bought it in 2005 for roughly $2.6 billion hoping for e-commerce synergies that never materialized, sold it off to a Silver Lake-led investor group in 2009, and watched Microsoft pay $8.5 billion for it in 2011 — a threefold jump across those two resales. Under Microsoft, Skype became the default word for video calling through the 2010s, peaking at over 50 million concurrent users in January 2013 and getting a last surge of relevance in March 2020, when COVID lockdowns sent everyone looking for a video call app. Zoom and Microsoft’s own Teams ate that surge instead. Microsoft announced Skype’s retirement on February 28, 2025, and shut the consumer service down on May 5, 2025, after 22 years, pushing remaining users onto Teams (free) with their existing Skype credentials.
Worth remembering
- "Let's Skype" entered everyday English as a verb for video calling, years before Zoom existed.
- At its January 2013 peak, over 50 million people were on Skype simultaneously.
- Skype briefly spiked again in the early weeks of COVID-19 lockdowns in March 2020, before Zoom and Teams took the surge in demand that followed.
The people
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Niklas Zennström — Co-founder, b. 1966
Swedish entrepreneur who co-founded Kazaa before launching Skype with Janus Friis in 2003; later founded venture firm Atomico.
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Janus Friis — Co-founder, b. 1976
Danish entrepreneur and Zennström's business partner on Kazaa, Skype, and later Joost and Rdio.
Gallery
Further reading
Sources
- Skype 1.0 was released on August 29, 2003, by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, with the client software developed by Estonians Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu, and Jaan Tallinn — the same team behind Kazaa. Wikipedia
- eBay acquired Skype in September 2005 for approximately $2.5-2.6 billion. Wikipedia
- A Silver Lake-led investor group bought 65% of Skype from eBay in September 2009 for about $1.9 billion. Wikipedia
- Microsoft agreed to acquire Skype for $8.5 billion in May 2011; the deal closed October 13, 2011. Microsoft News
- Skype hit peak concurrent-user figures around 34-36 million in early 2012 and over 50 million in January 2013. Wikipedia
- Microsoft announced on February 28, 2025 that it would retire Skype in May 2025 to focus on Microsoft Teams (free); the service shut down May 5, 2025. CNBC
- Skype accounts and contacts could carry over into Microsoft Teams (free); users were given a window to export chat history and data before the cutoff. Microsoft Support
- Skype lost significant market share to Zoom during the COVID-19 pandemic even after a brief usage spike, while Microsoft Teams grew past 300 million active users by mid-2023. TechCrunch
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