From “Download now (it’s free)”
to “Goodbye Skype”

The oldest capture we found is the teaser from July 9, 2003. Its browser title is Stay Tuned for Skyper™, and the first line describes the business as next generation resource sharing for mobile communications based on peer-to-peer technology and viral marketing. No calls, no phones, no price. The founders are named as Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, the founders of KaZaA, the file-sharing program.

In this replay even Zennström’s name is garbled, rendered as Zennström by a character-set mix-up. The only contact is info@skyper.net.

The December 3, 2003 capture is a real homepage. A green cloud holds the lowercase wordmark, and the headline says Skype™ is P2P telephony that just works. Three green ticks list free calls all over the world!, better sound than your regular phone and Works through all firewalls, no configuration. Under the logo sits a number: 3,355,593 downloads and counting...

The KaZaA line survives with its spelling fixed: Skype is the next phenomenon from the people who brought you KaZaA. Then it explains the difference.

Same P2P technology, but not to share files this time, but to talk for free with your friends. A link for the curious is labeled P2P telephony explained – for geeks only. The news column has the launch of Beta version 0.95 on November 20, 2003, with a ring tone manager. Skype’s own filing dates its launch to 2003.^[1]

In June 2004 the cloud is red. The layout is the same cream page, with a new headline, Skype™ is Free Internet Telephony that Just Works, and a second tick that reads Talk with up to five friends at the same time. The counter under the logo now says 13,941,770 downloads and counting..., about four times the December figure.

The small print is about growing up. A line in the sidebar says Join Us! We’re hiring. Two logos sit under Skype Preferred Partners: Siemens Mobile and Plantronics, the headset maker. And the news column opens on May 25, 2004 with Get the Picture?!, the launch of My Picture, a feature for posting your own image.

By October 2005 the cloud is blue and glossy, and the counter has moved into an orange speech bubble: 182,111,160 downloads. The tagline beside the logo is The whole world can talk for free. A green handwritten box adds With Skype you can talk to anyone, anywhere for free. Forever. Below it the page explains the product in one plain sentence: Skype is a little program for making free calls over the internet to anyone else who also has Skype.

Free had limits. A capture from January 1, 2005 introduces SkypeOut, calls to ordinary phones, as Not free, but pretty cheap. That year eBay bought Skype for $2.6 billion.^[2]

The June 2006 homepage keeps the globe and the green speech bubble with its promise, Forever. The line under it names a version: Skype 2.5 is free and easy to download, install and use. The paragraph below makes an offer that was hard to miss in 2006: All calls from Skype to landlines and mobiles within the US and Canada are also free till the end of the year.

The 2007 page shows what came after. Around a photo collage and the Windows client, a big green Download Skype button sits above the line Version 3.2.0.163 for Windows. Below it is the paid version of the same promise: Get Skype Unlimited - unlimited calls to any phone in the US and Canada. Just US$29.95 a year. That year eBay took a $1.4 billion write-down on Skype.^[2] In August 2007 a software problem knocked the peer-to-peer network over, and most users couldn’t use Skype for about two days.^[1]

In June 2008 a cyan photo hero says calls are free to other people on Skype and cheap to landlines and cell phones around the world. The browser title spells out what the page was for: Skype official website – free download and free calls and internet calls.

The June 2009 hero is a Skype call. A laughing boy holds a Rubik’s Cube inside a video window with a call timer, beside the headline Free calls with Skype and three short sentences: You get Skype. Your friends get Skype. You all talk, chat and video call for free. Under the clouds, two smaller panels sell calls to phones and Skype for iPhone.

Scroll to the bottom of the white area and the cube comes with paperwork. Between the fair-usage note and the country menu, a footer line reads Use of the Rubik’s Cube ® is by permission of Seven Towns Ltd. A capture from January 2, 2010 still carries the same permission line.

The owner was looking for the exit. In 2009 eBay decided to sell Skype because it saw no synergy with its commerce business, and kept a 30% stake.^[2]

By June 2010 the address is skype.com/intl/en-us/home, and the hero is a slideshow with numbered buttons. The slide in our still says Talk face-to-face. Free video calls. The page’s code holds more slides: calls to any phone, Skype on your mobile and Talk for hours. Skype-to-Skype calls are free. The mobile slide carries the small print of the time: WiFi connection or mobile data plan required.

Six months later the network that the page called free nearly stopped. On December 22, 2010 a bug in one version of the Windows client made about 40% of those clients fail. The bug itself hit only about 20% of Skype users, but it left the network with 25% to 30% fewer super-nodes, the computers that helped Skype find who was online. The load on the rest nearly brought the whole network down.^[1]

The September 2011 capture has a hole in it. The cyan hero says Discover Skype on the iPad and Experience Skype like never before, but its artwork is blank in this capture, so most of the hero is empty blue. Below it, a search box asks which country you want to call. The page’s code also holds a promotion for Up to 50% off international calls.

This is our first yearly capture after Microsoft announced the deal. On May 10, 2011 Microsoft announced it would buy Skype for $8.5 billion in cash from an investor group led by Silver Lake. Microsoft’s announcement described 170 million connected users and more than 207 billion minutes of voice and video calls in 2010.^[3]

In June 2012 a collage of flags and faces says Talk more with our new subscriptions. The rates box under it starts with the question Where is the person you want to call? and shows per-minute prices to India, China and the United Kingdom. The browser title has settled on the pitch: Free Skype internet calls and cheap calls to phones online - Skype.

In June 2013 the glossy cloud is gone. The logo is flat blue, and two big circles sit over a family photo: Wherever you are, wherever they are - Skype keeps you together. The green one just says Join.

The tiles below show where Skype was heading inside Microsoft. One announces Skype for Xbox One, Coming this November. Another, for Father’s Day, shows a handwritten sign reading DAD, YOU ROCK! and suggests a video greeting: create yours and even schedule it in advance.

In September 2013 Microsoft’s post for Skype’s tenth anniversary counted 300 million users.^[4] It listed how they used it: a soldier watching the birth of his child, a couple debating paint and carpet samples, and An explorer speaks to a classroom of children from his laboratory beneath the ocean.^[4]

In June 2014 the family photo becomes a grid of faces and the circle says Get together on a free group video call. The button is Get Skype, and a tile below adds that Now it’s free to get everyone together on the same call.

The 2015 capture turns the hero into one full-width photograph and a new slogan: Skype keeps the world talking. Call, message and share whatever you want for free. Under the green Download Skype button is a smaller link with a beta badge, Launch Skype for Web Beta. For the first time in these captures, the hero links straight to Skype for Web.

In 2016 the slogan adds now with group video on mobile and tablet too. A section called Invite anyone to a call lets friends join even if they don’t have Skype. Lower down, the group chat pitch ends with a joke: it’s great for sharing cat photos. Meow.

The June 2017 page still says Skype keeps the world talking, for free, with two buttons: Start a conversation and Download Skype. In a tile further down, an announcement about new content mentions a new word, Highlights. Highlights was part of the redesigned Skype app that year, and users could publish their own.

It didn’t last. In September 2018 Peter Skillman, director of design for Skype and Outlook, wrote that during 2017 customers told Microsoft it had overcomplicated key scenarios.^[5] Microsoft removed Highlights and Capture and gave users until September 30, 2018 to download what they had posted.^[5]

The homepage changed too. In June 2018 it is white, with a thin black wordmark and Join the millions talking on Skype over Talk. Chat. Collaborate. The top menu has Buy Office 365. In October 2019 the wordmark is bold, and the headline is Skype makes it easy to stay in touch. Below the hero, a card announces Split view on Skype out now!

In June 2020 the download button stepped aside. The hero says Meet Now on Skype and Host a video meeting in one click! No sign ups. No downloads required. The big blue button is Create a free meeting. Under it, in smaller type, is or Download Skype.

Two and a half months before this capture, on March 30, 2020, Microsoft said 40 million people were using Skype daily, up 70 percent from the month before, and Skype-to-Skype calling minutes were up 220 percent month over month. The same post promised video meetings in as little as three clicks.^[6] The homepage said one.

A year later Meet Now is still the first thing on the page: Create video calls with friends and family with one click! The button is Create a free video call, and Download Skype is still the small link.

The June 2022 hero is Make free calls to Ukraine, beside a laptop and a phone tinted blue and yellow, the colors of the Ukrainian flag, under a blue Skype icon. The text offers free calls to Ukraine and translation of calls from/to Ukrainian language, then lists organizations you could support with Skype Credit, among them Polish Humanitarian Action, Code for Romania and the Hungarian Red Cross.

In June 2023 the hero is Introducing the new Bing in Skype, with a question for the reader: Ready to supercharge your chats? In June 2024 a colorful card says Celebrating Skype’s 20 Year Journey. Read its text slowly and you find a stray comma: to bring smiles and, enabling conversations that transcend miles. Both pages still have a Download Skype button.

The March 15, 2025 capture is the last Skype homepage in this rewind. The headline is Goodbye Skype, hello Teams, and the text below starts with the date: Skype is retiring in May 2025. It explains that you can sign in to Microsoft Teams Free with your Skype account and find your chats and contacts there. In the hero there is no download button. The only link is Learn more.

Microsoft announced the retirement on February 28, 2025 and said it would stop selling paid Skype features to new customers.^[7] Skype was retired on May 5, 2025. Microsoft’s support page said the change affected free and paid users, but not Skype for Business.^[8] Even then one piece was meant to stay: Microsoft said eligible paying users would keep the Skype Dial Pad in the Skype web portal and in Teams.^[7]

The June 2026 capture of skype.com is not a Skype page at all. The archive followed a redirect to teams.live.com/free, Microsoft Teams Free, where the headline says Video calls and chats with anyone, anytime and the next line offers to Use Copilot to help plan your meetings. When we checked on October 16, 2026, skype.com/en/ still sent visitors to the same Teams Free page.

The buttons in the hero are Start a meeting for free and Join a meeting. And at the top right is a purple button: Download Teams.

In 2003 the homepage counted downloads of Skype. In 2026 the same address asks you to download Teams.skype.com, December 2003 → June 2026