The Death of Skype—and Every Other Tech Relic We Left Behind
Microsoft is pulling the plug on Skype after two decades. But it’s not the first tech giant to fade into oblivion.
To be fair, the writing has been on the wall for a while.
Microsoft's decision to finally pull the plug on Skype after years of neglect hardly comes as a shock. When Microsoft acquired Skype in 2011 for $8.5 billion, it was still a titan of internet communication. But a combination of corporate missteps, a clunky interface, and faster, sleeker competitors turned the once-dominant service into an afterthought. From 300 million users at its 2016 peak to a mere 36 million by last year, Skype now reads like a cautionary tale about the half-life of digital relevance.
As Microsoft shepherds Skype's remaining users toward Teams—a platform with all the charisma of an office carpet and the aesthetic warmth of an airport terminal—we're offered a moment to consider our peculiar relationship with the tools that mediate our connections. We surrender our memories to them, build routines around them, and then watch them vanish, often with the abruptness of a dropped call. And with that, we’re left to contemplate not just what we've lost, but how quickly today's essential services become tomorrow's digital fossils.
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In the ephemeral landscape of technology, applications rise and fall with the changing winds of innovation and corporate strategy. Similarly, Skype’s slow fade mirrored that of many other digital darlings, once synonymous with innovation, now little more than footnotes in tech history.
In a moment of nostalgia, here’s a throwback to the digital departed–the platforms and apps that once commanded our attention before fading into the binary beyond.
Vine (2013-2017)
Before TikTok's algorithmic hypnosis, there was Vine—six seconds of pure creative chaos that launched careers and birthed a cultural language still quoted today. Twitter acquired the looping video platform for $30 million in 2012 before it even launched, then systematically neglected it to death. Despite hosting 200 million active users and introducing the world to talents like King Bach and Liza Koshy, Vine couldn't monetize quickly enough for its corporate overlords.
Its shutdown spawned a digital diaspora, with creators scattering across YouTube, Instagram, and eventually TikTok—which would perfect the short-form formula Vine pioneered. In the elegant economy of those six-second loops, we witnessed perhaps the purest art form the internet has yet produced.
Google Plus (2011-2019)
Google's most ambitious attempt at social media arrived with a flourish of corporate muscle and departed with indifference. For eight years, the search giant attempted to make "circles" happen, segregating connections into neat groups while fundamentally misunderstanding what made social networking social.
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Despite Google muscling the platform into its suite of services—requiring Gmail users to create profiles and YouTube commenters to use the service—Google+ never escaped its reputation as a digital ghost town where posts echoed in empty virtual halls. When a data breach exposed 500,000 users' information, Google finally had its excuse to pull the plug on its failed experiment, admitting that 90 percent of user sessions lasted less than five seconds.
BlackBerry (1999-2022)
The device that put email in executives' pockets and introduced the world to text messaging addiction didn't so much die as slowly fade away—a technological legend diminished by its inability to adapt to touchscreen reality. BlackBerry's trademark physical keyboard—once so essential that "BlackBerry thumb" became a recognized repetitive strain injury—became a quaint relic in the iPhone era. After peaking with 80 million users in 2012, BlackBerry's market share collapsed, with the company eventually licensing its name to TCL before the final BlackBerry-branded phones lost all network support in January 2022. The "CrackBerry" generation now exists only in nostalgic anecdotes about the satisfaction of its clicking keys and the blinking red notification light.
Internet Explorer (1995-2022)
Microsoft's once-dominant browser spent more years as a punchline than as a serious tool, lingering long past its relevance. After securing 95 percent market dominance during the browser wars of the 1990's, Explorer became a victim of Microsoft's own success—with no meaningful competition, the company let the browser stagnate. By the time Microsoft attempted to modernize with Edge in 2015, Explorer had become synonymous with slowness and security vulnerabilities.
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When Microsoft finally ended support in June 2022, Explorer's primary use had been reduced to downloading better browsers. Yet for a generation of internet users, that blue "e" icon represented their first portal to the web—a digital training wheel eventually outgrown but fondly remembered.
Mixer (2016-2020)
Microsoft's attempt to challenge Twitch's streaming dominance came and went with briefness. Despite spending millions to secure exclusive contracts with streaming superstars like Ninja and Shroud, Mixer never captured the cultural zeitgeist necessary to sustain a platform built on community.
Microsoft's strategy of buying talent rather than organically building audience proved catastrophically misguided—viewers didn't follow their favorite streamers en masse, and Mixer's community never developed the critical mass needed for sustained growth. After four years and reportedly hundreds of millions in investment, Microsoft folded Mixer into Facebook Gaming.
Yahoo Messenger (1998-2018)
Before text messages became ubiquitous, Yahoo Messenger's purple interface hosted flirtations, after-school gossip, and the signature sound of doors opening and closing that signaled friends coming online.
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At its peak in the early 2000s, the messenger service boasted tens of millions of users, pioneering features like photo sharing and voice chat that would become standard across communication platforms. But as messaging integrated into social networks and smartphones, standalone services like Yahoo Messenger became redundant. By the time Yahoo pulled the plug after twenty years of service, most users had already moved on, leaving behind chat logs of conversations from a more innocent internet era.
Skype (2003-2025)
And now, Skype joins this digital boneyard. From its revolutionary debut that made international calling accessible and affordable to its peak of 300 million users in 2016, Skype changed how we communicate across distances.
Competitors like WhatsApp, FaceTime, and Zoom eventually flooded the market, offering streamlined alternatives without Skype's increasingly dated interface. The pandemic that should have been Skype's defining moment instead became its most public failure, as Zoom captured the market Skype had pioneered but failed to maintain.
And so, we're left with the reminder that nothing lasts forever—not even the platforms we once considered too big to fail. As we transfer our Skype contacts to Teams or migrate to other services entirely, we're reminded of technology's impermanence.
R.I.P. Skype. You'll be missed.