Microsoft has announced on its website that it will be putting an end to the operations of Skype by May 2025.

“In order to streamline our free consumer communications offerings so we can more easily adapt to customer needs, we will be retiring Skype in May 2025 to focus on Microsoft Teams (free), our modern communications and collaboration hub,” Microsoft said on its website.

Although the platform, which provided video calling services to hundreds of millions of users, will shut down, Microsoft said that users can remain connected to their chats and contacts by logging into their Microsoft Teams.

Skype was first released in 2003 and was thereafter acquired by Microsoft in 2011 for whooping £6.1bn ($8.5bn).

Once one of the world’s most popular platforms, Skype allowed people to make free voice calls from their computers to friends and family around the globe.

Although Skype was not the first company to offer such services, it played a significant role in popularizing free computer-to-computer calls.