Farewell, Skype: The Rise, Fall, and Glorious Lag of a Once-Great App

Dearly Departed Skype,

It is with a mix of nostalgia and profound indifference that we gather here today to mourn your slow, painful, and utterly predictable demise. After years of suffering in obscurity, neglected and abandoned by your own corporate overlords, reports have surfaced that Microsoft will soon pull the plug. And honestly? It’s about time.

Oh, Skype, how you once reigned supreme! You were the chosen one! The verb! The first app we thought of when we needed to video call someone and see their face in a pixelated, stuttering mess of dropped frames and delayed audio. You were our gateway to awkward family video chats, laggy job interviews, and customer service calls that made us question our life choices.

But then, something changed. You stopped being that scrappy, reliable(ish) little blue icon we loved, and Microsoft decided to “improve” you. That was your fatal mistake. They gave you clunky redesigns, unnecessary integrations, and whatever that “modern UI” was supposed to be. The world moved on, embracing slicker, smoother, and, let’s be honest, functional competitors. Zoom swooped in like a smug, well-dressed executive, and you? You became that forgotten, pre-installed relic buried deep in our computers, like a digital fossil from an ancient era.

And let’s not forget the indignity of your later years—living in Microsoft’s shadow, overshadowed by Teams, the office productivity tool that no one loves but everyone is forced to use.

Now, as we bid you farewell, we must acknowledge your legacy. You paved the way for the video calls we now take for granted. You made long-distance relationships slightly less unbearable. You gave us the joy of accidentally leaving our microphones on during embarrassing conversations. And let’s not forget those delightfully intrusive “BLOOP” notification sounds that haunt our dreams to this day.

Rest easy, Skype. May your name be remembered—not as a triumph of technology, but as a cautionary tale of what happens when innovation meets corporate meddling.

Sincerely,
A Former Skype User Who Moved On a Decade Ago