RIP Skype — you were right about almost everything

"When I knew it was over was when I downloaded Skype." All the way back in 2003, Michael Powell, then the chairman of the FCC and the United States' chief regulator of the telecom industry, told a roomful of academics and executives at the University of California at San Diego that he had seen the […]

May 5, 2025 - 15:10

RIP Skype — you were right about almost everything

"When I knew it was over was when I downloaded Skype."

All the way back in 2003, Michael Powell, then the chairman of the FCC and the United States' chief regulator of the telecom industry, told a roomful of academics and executives at the University of California at San Diego that he had seen the future of communication. "When the inventors of Kazaa are distributing, for free, a little program that you can talk to anybody else, and the quality is fantastic and it's free, it's over. You can pretend it's not. You can fight these fights. But it is over. The world will change now inevitably."

Powell was right. The world did change, and it changed in Skype's image. Then it left Skype behind.

On Monday, Microsoft shut Skype down for good, a few days short of 14 years after buying the service for $8.5 billion. Skype still had users until the bitter end, but both Microsoft and the world had more or less moved on. Microsoft has shifted all its investment to Teams, a corporate-focused app that the company swears will someday catch on with regular people. Zoom and Meet and countless other apps do video chat perfectly well. WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, and dozens of other messaging servic …

Read the full story at The Verge.