Although not the primary software program to permit video communication over the Web, Skype was one of many first recognizably trendy peer-to-peer video chatting apps. Created by a few of the identical builders behind the Kazaa peer-to-peer file-sharing software program, Skype was initially launched in 2003, at across the identical time when growing broadband Web availability and higher video compression codecs have been fixing the bandwidth downside.

However as detailed by Wired, Skype misplaced momentum after the Microsoft buy, partly resulting from a redesign that folks did not like and partly as a result of upstarts like Zoom have been providing new options and higher name high quality. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020 and every kind of workplace jobs shifted to distant work, it was Zoom and never Skype that was in a greater place to turn into the video-chatting app everybody was trapped in.

Skype has been merging into or being changed by Groups for years, beginning with the end of Skype for Business in 2017, a couple of months after formally releasing the first version of Teams. Microsoft has pushed Groups aggressively, together with it alongside its flagship Workplace apps and Microsoft 365 service for years. Some regulators believed this was, in reality, too aggressive, and Microsoft decoupled Teams from the other Office apps in 2023 (for the European Union) and 2024 (for everybody else).