Downloading from Skype

In less than two months, on May 5 this year, Skype will cease to exist. This was announced last week by Microsoft, which has owned Skype since 2011. The majority reacted to that news with two questions. The first is whether it is possible for such a service, generically so to speak, to disappear. Another thing is, when was the last time we actually used Skype.

This second question is the answer to the first. During the pandemic online meetings, I communicated with people from Microsoft and would often offer to talk or see each other on Skype. Their answer was the same. Skype? They haven't used it for a long time because they do everything through Microsoft Teams. Already at that time, that is, three or four years ago, Skype was considered completely outdated and unnecessary by Microsoft itself, although communication applications flourished because of the lock. It simply belonged to a bygone era, technologically and in every other respect. It was still maintained by a significant number of users. But since that number is decreasing every year, the owners decided to force us to migrate to Teams, where it will be nicer and more comfortable for us. I guess.

Along with the Skype shutdown announcement, users were told that for the next two months they could install Teams, move all their Skype contacts and conversations there, and see if they liked using it in the future. If they don't want to, they can save everything they had on Skype on their computer, since there they have contacts, conversations and files that could mean something to them. Skype will no longer be supported and the question is how long Microsoft will support the transition before shutting down the servers completely.

The trouble is that those who are used to the simplicity of Skype have to switch to an application that is significantly more complicated because it was not created with the same intention. The idea of ​​Skype from the very beginning was to allow us to get in touch with another person anywhere in the world, without paying a penny, that is, the price of an international telephone conversation. On the contrary, Skype was "free", that is, we paid for it through the Internet connection.

To understand this, it is necessary to go back to 2003, when a Swede and a Dane together with a group of Estonian programmers launched Skype using the then popular peer to peer technology (where all connected computers are both servers and clients at the same time). It was supposed to be called Skype (from Sky peer to peer), but that name was already taken. It used VoIP technology, that is, the transmission of voice over the Internet, which at the time was a revolution that was not viewed with approval by telecoms. Skype has become a generic term, "we can hear or see each other via Skype" has maintained many friendships, loves, but also basic family relationships.

Its development and popularity was breakneck, just two years later it was bought by eBay for an incredible 2,5 billion dollars, and six years later Microsoft bought it from them for a then astronomical 8,5 billion. Over time, Microsoft moved it to Azure, its cloud server system leaving peer to peer.

Today, about 40 million people use Skype every day, which is not small, but it is only a fragment of the number that used it at the beginning of the second decade of this century, when almost every other international conversation was conducted via Skype. In the meantime, we've moved on to WhatsApp, Viber, Zoom, and a bunch of other apps that do the same thing, but are mostly linked to our phone number, which in an insecure world gives us some control.

Metaphorically speaking, Skype will suffer the fate of the Belgrade railway station. We all have some memories of nice trips (communication) that started and ended there, but most did not experience the cancellation dramatically except in an emotional sense. A parallel emotion will accompany the transition to Teams.