The company that pioneered voice communication over the internet has withered to dust in Microsoft’s hands. Still, I for one am grateful for itSo Microsoft has decided to terminate Skype, the internet telephony company it bought in 2011 for $8.5bn (£6.6bn). Its millions of hapless users are to be herded into Microsoft Teams, a virtual encampment with a brain-dead aesthetic that makes even Zoom look cool. This eventuality had been telegraphed for quite a while but, even so, it comes as a jolt because Skype was a remarkable venture, and its demise closes a chapter of an interesting strand of technological history.The internet has been around for much longer than most people realise. It goes back to the 1960s and the creation of Arpanet, a military computer network that emerged after the US had its “Sputnik moment” – the awful realisation that the Soviet Union seemed to be racing ahead in the technology stakes. The design of Arpanet’s successor, the internet we use today, started in th...
Skype, acquired by Microsoft in 2011 and set to be terminated, revolutionized human connection by pioneering free internet telephony. Despite being superseded by Teams and Zoom, Skype played a significant role in the internet's early days, enabling "permissionless innovation" and challenging the limitations of traditional telephone networks.
