News Analysis
Skype is finally being put out to pasture. Microsoft is discontinuing the product and migrating Skype users to Teams. Given the company’s long history of merging, rebranding and sunsetting collaboration and productivity tools, it’s honestly surprising Skype has lasted this long.
Microsoft’s value proposition is consolidation — bundling overlapping products into a single ‘one-stop shop’ platform. It may not always offer the best product in each category, but its strength is integration: everything works together in one seamless-ish package. Its strategy has landed Microsoft at the top of the productivity and collaboration market, in part because most organizations and consumers prefer a one-stop shop rather than face the challenge of piecing together disparate tools.
Cynics might say Microsoft is axing Skype to force users onto Teams and cut support costs for redundant products. Boosters will argue it streamlines the ecosystem and refocuses development. Either way, the move makes sense.
As the collaboration market has matured and tools have become commoditized, differentiation has shifted from technological superiority to more mundane factors like price, support and brand. At this point, keeping Skype alive just doesn’t fit the strategy.
Microsoft’s Graveyard of Collaboration Tools
Of course, Skype is just the latest casualty in Microsoft’s long history of evolving (and abandoning) productivity and collaboration products. Some were left behind as technology architectures shifted from peer-to-peer, to server-based, to cloud-based. Others were the result of merging acquired products or rethinking branding strategies.
Let’s take a walk down memory lane.
- NetMeeting (circa 1995) was Microsoft’s first big collaboration tool, bundled into Windows 95. Microsoft discontinued it in 2003 and replaced it with Office Live Meeting, which evolved into Lync, which was rebranded as Skype for Business, before finally getting folded into Teams. Phew.
- Groove Networks, launched in 1997 as a decentralized collaboration platform, was acquired by Microsoft in 2005 and rebranded as Office Groove. It later became SharePoint Workspace, then OneDrive for Business, and eventually got absorbed into SharePoint Online. (Up until a few years ago, if one of Microsoft’s collaboration products crashed, you’d still see a ‘Groove.exe’ error pop up. Some tech dies a slow death.)
- Yammer, founded in 2008 as an enterprise social networking platform, was acquired by Microsoft in 2012. It has since been rebranded as Viva Engage, which operates somewhat independently from Teams, but with significant feature overlap.
- Delve, a Microsoft-native tool, launched in 2014 as a content discovery tool powered by the Microsoft 365 Graph. Over time, its functionality was absorbed into Outlook, Teams and Microsoft Search. Today, its core features are being re-positioned under Microsoft’s AI-powered Copilot offering.
And then, of course, there’s Skype.
The Rise (and Fall) of Skype
Skype launched in 2003 as a peer-to-peer VoIP tool for voice and video calls. Microsoft bought it in 2011 and reworked it into a server-based system, but kept the brand. In fact, Microsoft liked the name so much it rebranded its enterprise VoIP tool, then called Lync, as Skype for Business.
This was during Microsoft’s so-called "simplification" phase, where every product had a consumer and enterprise counterpart with matching names: Skype and Skype for Business, OneDrive and OneDrive for Business, Outlook.com and Outlook.
It seemed to make sense at the time: use a single brand to make it clearer which tool was intended for which purpose. But the execution was confusing. Skype and Skype for Business came from entirely different tech stacks, as did OneDrive and OneDrive for Business, and Outlook.com from Outlook. The result? Overlapping products with similar names but with little in common.
Enter Microsoft Teams
Microsoft introduced Microsoft Teams in 2017 to unify all these scattered, overlapping tools into a single collaboration platform. Skype for Business, Groove, SharePoint and others were merged into Teams as the new standard. The COVID-driven remote work boom accelerated Teams adoption and made it easier for Microsoft to retire older tools.
Given this history, Skype’s demise was inevitable. If anything, it’s surprising Microsoft kept it alive this long. Skype was a brand that once gave Microsoft’s reputation some much-needed cachet in the collaboration space, but those days are long gone. With productivity and collaboration tools now largely commoditized, the focus naturally shifts to the next big thing — AI-driven innovation. And hence, Microsoft is putting all its productivity eggs into the Copilot basket.
The Next Chapter
If history is any guide, in a few years, we’ll be telling a similar story about Microsoft acquiring, merging and rebranding a slew of AI-driven productivity tools into its platform. This cycle of innovation, consolidation and rebranding is just how the tech industry works: like the seasons, cyclical and inevitable.
So, what’s next on the chopping block? Yammer.
Viva Engage may be the current name, but it’s still a separate product with an independent identity. The writing is on the wall: as soon as Microsoft can convince Yammer diehards that Teams can meet all their needs, it will disappear like so many others before it.
So, farewell, Skype. You had a good run. And Yammer, you might want to start saying your goodbyes.
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Editor's Note: Interested in more sunsetted tools? Read on:
- The Workplace From Meta Clock Is Ticking. Factors to Consider Before Migrating — Workplace from Meta customers have less than a year to move off of the communications platform. Here are some factors to consider before you jump ship.
- Microsoft Delve Retires in December 2024. What It Means for Users — Microsoft will retire its graph search tool Delve in December, but that might be for the best. Here's why.
- Yammer's Integration Into Viva Engage Is a Story of Evolution, Not Extinction — Microsoft's decision to fold Yammer into Viva Engage is a logical next step following years of confusion around the enterprise social network.
