As overused as the phrase “All good things come to and end” has become, it’s again made a huge comeback in the face of Microsoft pulling the plug on Skype on May 5.

Designed to “connect with the people that matter most in your life and work,” Skype was acquired by Microsoft from eBay in a $8.5 billion deal nearly 15 years ago. Having been launched in 2003, the Bill Gates-founded company describes the VoIP, Voice over Internet Protocol, service on its website as: “With Skype, you can have meetings and create great things with your workgroup, share a story or celebrate a birthday with friends and family, and learn a new skill or hobby with a teacher. It’s free to use Skype – to send messages and have audio and video calls with groups of up to 100 people!”

No more Skype

In today’s world, the idea of video-calling seems exceedingly commonplace, given the ubiquitous influence of social networking platforms. However, at the time, the concept of being able to video call or chat via HD voice with your loved ones living at the other far end of the world than yourself seemed all kinds of ingenious.

In late February, Jeff Teper, president of collaborative apps and platforms at Microsoft announced via a post that the tech juggernaut would be bidding farewell to the service by shifting its focus to Teams in an attempt to “streamline our free consumer communications offerings so we can more easily adapt to customer needs.”

Then again, in an April 29 statement, Microsoft highlighted how over four-times the original traffic had drastically stationed itself on Microsoft Teams. “The timing of this shift is driven by the significant advancements and adoption of Microsoft Teams. In the past two years, the number of minutes spent in meetings by consumer users of Teams has grown 4X,” the company stated. “And Teams free offers many of the same core features as Skype: 1:1 calls, group calls, messaging, and file sharing, as well as enhanced features like hosting meetings, managing calendars, and building and joining communities — all for free.”

Beyond the world of technical jargon, there exists the bottomless pit of nostalgia. As a result, the video calling service’s death has prompted a series of “RIP Skype” posts on social media, and rightly so.

As James Hennessy, editor at Australian news outlet Capital Brief previously told ABC News Australia, people’s engagement with Skype marked the “first time they had ever used a video chat software.” Hence, its emergence as a market leader at the time made sense. Despite its original victorious stance, the platform ultimately died a quick death as it suffered “a real loss of its strategic lead” in the wake of a “series of acquisitions.”

RIP Skype: Internet reacts to OG VoIP’s death

This past week has witnessed a surge of emotional outpour on social media, as users grieved the death of Skype. Tearfully-charged messages like “Our whole childhood deleted just like that” and “Skype shutting down feels like my childhood just packed its bag and left” surfaced on X, formerly Twitter.

Another user wrote, “RIP Skype. You were quite the video-calling OG out there.” A third tweeted: “A nostalgic service that allowed us to connect.” Some even fondly looked back at the service’s signature outgoing tune, saying, “3 sleeps away and this sound will be only in our memory. RIP SKYPE. LONG LIVE THE NAME.”

Back in February, an X user bemoaned about the service’s downward spiral over the years, especially given that it originally gained a unique identity to the extent that idea of video-calling was exclusively and synonymously tied to the word “Skype.”

“They had us using “skype” as a verb to refer to the concept of video calling how did they screw up this bad,” the person wrote. Yet another commented: “RIP Skype — from being the way we said ‘hello’ in long-distance love to becoming a ghost in the Teams machine. End of an era for the OG video calls.” Many also associated their crucial core childhood memories with the platform: “I remember playing gmod and call of duty waw zombies over Skype with the boys. Sad.”

As for what happens with Skype from May onwards, all user accounts — along with the chat memories — will be moved to Microsoft Teams. We had Skype long before we had Zoom, Discord and Instagram, but not anymore. The latter may have won the war, but many of our hearts are still with the OG.

RIP Skype. It was fun while it lasted. Thank you for bringing significantly long-distance relationships closer at a time when it all seemed impossible.