Estonian pioneering telecoms tech platform Skype closes down
Estonian-founded Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) platform Skype ended its operations for good on Monday, after nearly 22 years of existence.
Microsoft, Skype's owner, says it is refocusing on further developing its chat and video conferencing product Teams, and Skype users' contacts will be automatically transferred to that platform.
Skype was a pioneer in VoIP tech and helped put Estonia on the map as a startup and tech hub soon after it was founded. It went live in August 2003.
In recent years, however, as the focus shifted from phone calls to messaging and video conferencing apps, Skype started losing market share to newer competitors, including Zoom, Slack, Signal and Google Meet.
When Microsoft bought Skype in 2011, it had around 150 million monthly users, but by 2020 that number had dropped to about 23 million.
Skype was originally created by four Estonian programmers: Priit Kasesalu, Jaan Tallinn, Ahti Heinla, and Toivo Annus, and headquartered in the Mustamäe district of Tallinn. The company was first acquired by e-commerce company eBay. Microsoft later paid around US$8.5 billion to acquire the company.
