The pioneering skype even became a verb, but is now glorious

Anyone who wanted to make video calling in the first two decades of this century with his loved one in France or with a colleague in the United States, rarely asked themselves the program with which program. Just as ‘Googling’ was right about looking up something on the internet, ‘Skyping’ became a verb for online image calling. Billions of people pressed the blue telephone icon for years, and then to hear the well -known call noise And start a conversation.

But nowadays the same Skype tune mainly evokes nostalgic feelings. The service has been surpassed on all sides in recent years and turned out to be no longer viable. Microsoft, the owner of Skype, decided last week to draw the plug from the Beldienst. On 5 May, the calling sound of Skype will shed through living rooms and offices for the last time.

And so Skype, once pioneering and for many years sole ruler in the video bullet landscape, will be destroyed in two months.

Start time of the webcam

The Skype, founded in 2003, sent a shock wave through the telecom world at the beginning of this century. From now on people could call each other via the internet for free; Initially only with sound, later with image. Users could also call telephone numbers for a much lower amount than via the fixed line.

The founders, a club of techies from Estonia, Denmark and Sweden without a telecom background, initially had few expectations, they told news channel CNBC last year. But the service came exactly at the right time: the internet use exploded and it was the start time of the webcam – then as a spherical device on the computer. Skype was also particularly user -friendly and had a unique feature: group bells. Skype had 59 million users within two years.

The popularity of Skype also did not miss the big bosses in Silicon Valley and in 2006 Ebay Skype took over 2.6 billion dollars. Nevertheless, the online service for second -hand items turned out to have done a bad buy; A revenue model for the free Beldienst was not found. Although the number of users continued to grow, the company discovered that buyers and sellers of second -hand bicycles, books or dining room chairs had no need to call each other (video). Ebay quickly sold Skype.

A group of investors became the owner of Skype, until Microsoft won the service in 2011. Microsoft beat Google to its own joy and took over the company for $ 8.5 billion – the biggest purchase from the company up to that moment. The company integrated Skype in Outlook and game computer Xbox and the video service continued to grow like cabbage. At the height in 2016, Skype had 300 million users.

But then Skype’s sitting company crumbled quickly. The decline was started in 2018, when WhatsApp introduced a video belfth function and also became more popular, but also became more popular, but gained momentum. When working from home during the Lockdowns ‘the New Normal’, other newcomers such as Zoom (now market leader) and Google Hangout also preferred the LOG Skype. Moreover, Microsoft Skype itself no longer took that seriously: the company mainly promoted the younger brother teams, intended for companies.

‘Skyping’

In this way Skype has become a great service in the margin in recent years, which in 2023 still ‘only’ had 36 million users. In 2022, Skype became the target of spot in a video of the popular, satirical YouTube channel Dropout, in which the ‘CEO’ of Skype to the world wants to make it clear that Skype still exists.

But from the beginning of May it is really over. Until then, the remaining users can decide whether they want to switch to teams. They can then take their calling and conversation history and contacts with them.

For the time being ‘skyping’ is in The Van Dale With the definition ‘calling via the internet’. The question is when ‘Zooming’ will replace it.

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