Every Saturday morning, our preteen son chats to his grandparents in Germany – on Skype. They swap jokes, blow kisses and add balloons or mistletoe to the screen.  

It is a small family ritual, sweet and a bit silly – and the last thing I still do on a platform the world has quietly left behind. 

Now, each time we connect, Skype reminds us with a message: the service is being retired in May 2025. Microsoft wants everyone on their Teams app instead. The little blue Skype window that once felt like a digital miracle is on death row. 

I find that oddly sad. 

Skype was born in 2003, in European obscurity. A Swede and a Dane co-founded it, but the software itself was the work of four Estonians.  

Within two years, eBay had bought it for $2.6 billion. Then, in 2009, private equity scooped up 65 percent for $1.9 billion. In 2011, Microsoft paid $8.5 billion for it. 

Skype’s growth was phenomenal. In 2005, it had just 2.9 percent of the international call market. By 2014, it had 40 percent. Competition authorities might have wondered whether this was a dangerous monopoly in the making. 

They need not have worried. Technology moves too fast for regulators. Skype’s rise and fall played out before any competition watchdogs got around to acting.  

And so, what had looked like the future was soon overtaken. The pandemic did the rest. Zoom surged, WhatsApp adapted, and Microsoft poured its resources into Teams. Meanwhile, Skype was quietly shuffled to the back room. 

Still, Skype had soul. It had that unmistakable ringtone: doo-doo-doo-dip. It had charm. It let kids drop snowflakes on their grandparents. It did not take itself too seriously. 

But it also aged badly. Skype never kept up with the sleekness of newer platforms. The interface stayed clunky. The features felt stuck in 2011.  

And then there were the strange contact requests, usually from exotic women with suggestive profile images. I declined them all. Aside from the obvious reasons, I never warmed to Skype’s auto-translate. 

Still, Skype did one thing well: It enabled people far away from one another to talk for free. That once made it revolutionary.  

Thirty years ago, such calls were science fiction. Twenty years ago, they were the future. Ten years ago, Skype ruled them. And today? It is being retired. 

Yes, Skype is just a piece of software. But it is also a story of wonder lost, of novelty becoming normal, of innovation outpacing its creators. 

So farewell, Skype. And thank you. 

Doo-doo-doo-dip.