In 2003 a wonder app, Skype was released. It took the world by storm by providing something Instant Messengers did not have - free telephony, free screen-sharing, computer to phone, buy a number, send SMSs.
Before Skype, there were the usual bunch - ICQ, AOL, Yahoo, MSN and custom messengers, and the old grand-daddy - CompuServe Mail.
Before ICQ, AOL, and other messengers, there were age-old ISP (Internet Service Provider) specific email, gopher, ftp programs… and… IRC.
In those days, there was no NET (First released 2002 with Visual Studio 7), Java was a mess by Microsoft pre-installing Microsoft Java, a messed-up version of Java Run-time environment, newfangled Sun (aka Fun Microsystems) servers, there were multiple browsers.
Software development - was divided into scripting languages - PHP, Perl and traditional languages - Microsoft’s PWB - Programmer’s Workbench (also called Programmer’s Waste Basket), Borland’s TurboPascal, TurboC, Turbo C++, Turbo C++ with DPMI, 32-bit Borland C++, Watcom C++.
There are FoxPro, dBase, Clipper and older xBase compilers.
On the other corner, legacy VAX machines, legacy IBM AIX hummed along. Older traditional languages - Cobol, Fortran using older B-Tree mainframe file database.
Smaller gadgets - 3G Nokia Phones, Symbian, Palm, Windows CE started to become available.
All of them, have similar problems - Compile time, file-usage, memory-usage. Making business apps - is slow and cumbersome.
Turbo C, TurboPascal compiles to memory. That means - you can run your C++ or Pascal code in-memory, saving time.
For teaching purposes - learning about C, C++ this made sense. Teaching Linked List, Stack, basic UI via crt.pas or WinCrt.pas1
Visual C++ 4.0, 5.0, 6.0 compiler was so slow, it made Windows development feel like multi-year development. New versions of Visual C++ barely wrapped Win32 APIs.
The outliers - Turbo C++, Paradox, Turbo Pascal, older versions of Turbo Basic, Object Vision moved their high-speed compiler to Windows.
You have two choices - use Delphi and work fast or use Visual C++ and wait for compiler to build, link, and then continue coding.
To create beautiful Windows apps - you needed Visual C++. Visual Basic won’t cut - you end up with tons of VBX or OCX files.
What made Delphi unique, was the fast compiler, UI designer, and ease of development.
Thus, Skype is a Delphi app, wrapping Visual C++ DLLs which are extracted to \Temp\ folder.
The key aspect of Skype, is the SILK2 protocol, derived loosly from BitTorrent’s protocol.
Skype uses Super-nodes, which are nodes which encrypted chat traffic would pass through. This was later replaced by 10,000 servers.3
Skype’s directory service is encrypted, unlike Yahoo, ICQ or AOL. This prevented third-party clients from accessing Skype network.
Ported from Delphi to DirectUI, then partly supporting DCOM+ Add-ins, then partly Xamarin NET Standard DLLs, then partly Office VSTO Add-ins
What caused Skype to fall behind?
There are many reasons, perhaps, was the conversion of Delphi VCL to a half-Delphi half-Microsoft’s DirectUI4, de-emphasis of the MacOS and Linux Skype client.
A particular behavior of Microsoft is making half-supported and half-baked solutions.
Best experienced on Windows Phone
The half-hearted Skype client - using Xamarin in Android, iOS may have caused Skype to become “mostly unusable” during 2010-2014. The best way to experience Skype, was to use Microsoft Windows Phone.
The older Skype client on iPhone, was, sadly, unusable.
Skype’s problem - was thinking of doing a Windows port to iOS and putting dozens of dialogs to iOS.
As the years passed, new shiny messaging clients came - WhatsApp, Telegram came.
What went wrong?
There are many reasons why Skype fell. This is the author’s reasons:
Poor mobile adaption. On Android and iOS, it was mostly “unusable” - it ran in the background as bloated fat-client, which sucked battery life and mobile data.
The super-node concept worked poorly on mobile.Skype-out was intentionally unusable. The Skype-out caused stuttering, pips and pops, crackling, making phone-calls unlistenable, hag-voice, screeching and impossible to listen to.
SMS receive did not work. You could send but not receive. What’s the point? The person you send SMS to, might think you are sending spam, or stalking.
The screen-sharing was… mostly unusable. It showed… mostly black screen, slow updates, or unintentionally cause speech to stutter.
New features, like bots, meant - automatic harassment, spam. Later, crypto-scams, unwanted phone calls from other users.
Later, as the protocol was updated, it caused message-corruption, logouts, account take-overs.
Thus, all your messages in Skype, got lost or corrupted. This was used by scammers and fraudsters to hide their tracks.New startups - such as Zoom fulfilled gaps in Skype - ironically using Skype’s Silk protocol.
WhatsApp had better privacy, less bloat and less battery intensive.
On-line SMS and telephony providers provided crisp-clear phone-out and SMS receive - when Skype was shut down, Skype phone-out quality was poor, and impossible to receive SMS.New features that competed with Zoom, WhatsApp were implemented in Teams. Customers were willing to pay for Teams, and not Skype for Business.
Perhaps, the reasons why, - was, Skype for Business was not isolated from the main Skype directory, so, Skype for Business users were discoverable by non Skype-for-Business users - so distractions, unprofessional hackers, fraudsters would target them.Skype-for-business became non-serious when employees would keep company IP, transition to non-business considered as huge red flags that Slack, Teams were designed to prevent.
Social features added to Skype, meant friends-of-employees can stalk other employees, and add themselves (intentionally or not) to company chats. Given the ability to send EXEs to unwitting victims, it meant, an unwitting employee could send you ransomware.
By various statistics, there were more than 2 billion Skype users5, perhaps, the only metric that matters, was how many paid services, value-added Microsoft could sell to Skype users.
Skype experimented with Ads - unfortunately, the ad-tech was easily manipulated by threat-actors, caused unwanted mobile data usage.
Skype’s ads marketplace was poorly implemented, expensive, and due to Windows open environment, allowed clickjacking, click-baiting, and no-control on websites, leading to bait & switch ads. Eventually, Microsoft stopped ads in Skype.
FB Ads usually link to a FB page, or FB marketplace Ads.
Teams - was focused on created isolated islands of users, full screen-sharing, cross-company secured file-sharing, crisp and clear phone-out and full SMS functionality. Although teams had less number-of-users, it created more value per user.
By May 2025, Skype shut down.
This is an excellent analysis of WHY Skype went extinct. And M$ did the same damn thing to my beloved Nokia. Everything that was great & developed by outsiders, they suck the fcukig life out of it after acquisition.
I also knew the original Skype was a Delphi app which was probably its most famous GUI app ever developed. Also, Skype was a very disruptive piece of communications tech in its heyday.