Wed, Mar 05, 2025 15:31

As of today, March 5, 2025, Microsoft has shut down Skype. I honestly thought Teams had already replaced it years ago. Still, reading the news made me nostalgic about how I, my friends, family, and colleagues once used Skype.

• I think my father was the one who first introduced Skype to our home as a cheaper way to make international calls from Belgium to our family’s landline in Germany. Back then, even calls within Europe were expensive, so this was pretty groundbreaking. But, I don’t remember us using it that much—probably because you had to sit behind a computer to make a call, and I vaguely recall some annoying echo issues.
• For a long time, Skype, for me, was a quirky but functional option for video and voice calls. I remember having some job interviews on Skype, but one awkward part was finding people. You couldn’t just use an email—you needed to know someone’s Skype nickname. Many people, as a workaround, added their Skype ID to their email signatures. Later, at the university where I worked, we used Skype for Business, which at least made it easier to connect with colleagues.
• During the COVID-19 pandemic, my friends and I used Skype for a while to play online board games via Board Game Arena. But before long, Zoom became the go-to platform thanks to its smoother experience and better features. For work, however, Zoom didn’t last long—Microsoft Teams quickly took over, despite being clunkier. It won out mainly because it was tightly integrated with organizational tools.
• Furthermore, these changes are closely tied to technological advancements. Over the years, there has been a shift away from peer-to-peer (P2P) systems, which rely on a decentralized communication model where participants connect directly. However, these systems often struggle to scale effectively. This became evident once during an academic workshop that attempted to use the P2P-based platform BigBlueButton but quickly had to switch to Zoom. In contrast, modern applications leverage centralized servers or cloud infrastructure to enable to communication among participants.