Skype has been around for more than half of my life, and for a long time, to make a video call was to “Skype” someone. But now, Skype is officially dead and gone, and I’m not sure how I feel about that.
I’ve always had that little blue icon around somewhere on every device I own, and Skype basically became the default video conferencing service just as I entered the workforce. I did a lot of business using Skype over the years. So how did it go from being a verb to being past-tense?
What Made Skype Great
Skype was simple and it worked. For an application that basically pioneered real-time video conferencing over the web, that’s pretty impressive. Sure, there were some hiccups here and there, but by and large I don’t recall ever having real struggles not related to bad internet connectivity. Even then, things would have to be really bad for a Skype call to drop or the quality to become completely unusable.
Moreover, anyone can set the software up with ease. You don’t have to be an “IT geek” to get the mic, webcam, and other necessary prep done to make a call. Believe me, I spent years doing personal tech support for some senior people in organizations, and if they can set up Skype without help, anyone can.
Skype never became particularly bloated, and even being purchased by Microsoft didn’t hurt the software too much on a functional level, though perhaps that was just the result of all the focus being on Teams instead.
The Microsoft Acquisition and Slow Decline
Microsoft bought Skype for a whopping $8.5Bn back in 2011. At the time, it was one of the biggest buyouts in the company’s history, and since then it’s hard to see who actually benefited from this deal. I don’t know if Teams needed technology that was in Skype or some sort of related IP, but once Microsoft launched Teams, it split its video conferencing platform.
Since then, it’s been pushing Teams into large companies and universities while Skype languishes on the sidelines. When the COVID pandemic hit, those big companies and institutions obviously just kept using Teams, but instead of the huge civilian population that now needed such a service flocking to Skype, they went to Zoom instead.
With the right support from Microsoft, Skype could have captured that audience instead of Zoom, but it feels a bit like the plan was always to let Skype slowly fizzle out while Teams was developed into the real solution from the company’s perspective.
Microsoft Teams Is a Poor Substitute
Skype is being phased out (I assume) so that Microsoft can unify its services into catch-all apps like Microsoft Teams. To the company’s credit, my contacts and Skype history have all transitioned neatly into Teams and so, on a purely functional level, things at least work. So it was largely painless.
The thing is that Microsoft Teams (and please excuse the technical terminology) sucks as a piece of software a human is meant to use. It’s exactly the sort of corporate, over-engineered software package you get from years of feature requests from different business clients. It’s ugly, it’s got too many buttons, and the less time I have to spend looking at it, the better.
That means it’s not a replacement for Skype if you’re just a private user. It’s extra annoying when you consider that corporate clients were already using Teams for secure in-house company calls, so the only people really affected by Skype’s demise are normal folks who just want to chat with family and friends, but now have to use the equivalent of a company boardroom to do it. Can you imagine having to get your grandma set up with MS Teams? That’s pure nightmare fuel.
I’m a Google Meet Guy Now
These days, the closest solution to something as simple and universal as Skype seems to be Google Meet. Just about everyone seems to have a Google account, even if they might not use it much, and it doesn’t take long to set one up, so Meet is usually the common denominator. It is integrated with my calendar, it’s easy to set up and control, and I’ve never had any call quality issues.
I don’t know about you, but if Microsoft’s plan was to funnel us all to Teams for our video-calling needs, it’s backfired. At least it did in my case. Don’t be surprised if there’s a Teams-branded dedicated video calling app in the company’s future. Because I’m willing to bet a lot of people won’t want to use the bloated UI mess that is MS Teams just to make a call. Right now I have exactly one business contact that’s moved over to Teams, and if our relationship ends that app is going in the bin.