Skype is logging off.

On Friday, Microsoft announced that the 21-year-old calling and messaging service will shut down May 5. The software company is encouraging Skype users to migrate to its free Teams app.

Skype won attention in the 2000s for giving people a way to talk without paying the phone company, but stumbled in the mobile era and didn’t enjoy a major resurgence during the pandemic. Some people have forgotten that it’s still available, given the many other options for chatting and calling.

“We’ve learned a lot from Skype over the years that we’ve put into Teams as we’ve evolved teams over the last seven to eight years,” Jeff Teper, president of Microsoft 365 collaborative apps and platforms, said in an interview with CNBC. “But we felt like now is the time because we can be simpler for the market, for our customer base, and we can deliver more innovation faster just by being focused on Teams.”

Over the next few days, Microsoft will start allowing people to sign in to Teams with Skype credentials, and Skype contacts and chats will transfer over, according to a blog post. People can also export their Skype data. The company will stop selling monthly Skype subscriptions, and users with credits can keep using them in Teams.

“This is obviously a big, big moment for us, and we’re certainly very grateful in many ways,” Teper said. “Skype pioneered audio and video calling on the web for many, many people.”

It’s one of the most enduring digital brands.

In 2003, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, who previously co-founded peer-to-peer file-sharing program Kazaa, launched Skype in Estonia with help from a band of former classmates with zero experience in telecommunications. Originally, Skype was a tool for people to call one another online for free. The quirky name stood for “sky peer to peer,” a reference to the service’s underlying voice over internet protocol, or VoIP, architecture.

Skype caught on quickly. By 2004, there were 11 million registered users. By the time eBay announced a plan to buy Skype Technologies SA for $2.6 billion in 2005, the user count had reached 54 million, and Skype was anticipating $60 million in annual revenue, thanks to payments from those who wished to call mobile phones and landlines.

Meg Whitman, eBay’s CEO at the time, envisioned that Skype would help people more quickly complete sales of products, especially costly ones, by connecting buyers and sellers. And eBay could charge extra for such calls. Skype users across the world could discover eBay and PayPal, too. The deal was completed 29 days later.

Under eBay, Skype’s user number grew, crossing 405 million by 2008, and communications revenue rose. But then Whitman stepped down as CEO, making way for former Bain executive John Donahoe, who didn’t think eBay’s core businesses were benefiting from the Skype transaction.

In 2009, the economy was in recession, eBay’s sales growth had turned negative, and the stock price was lower than it had been since 2001. In a statement that touted the release of a Skype app for Apple’s iPhone, Donahoe announced that eBay would launch a Skype initial public offering as part of a separation.

But eBay never filed for a Skype IPO. Four and a half months after declaring the IPO strategy, eBay said it had reached an agreement to sell Skype to an investor group led by Silver Lake in a deal worth $2.75 billion. The online auction operator received a 30% stake in Skype’s buyer. Under the investor group, Skype filed for an IPO, but that didn’t come to pass, either. Microsoft wound up acquiring Skype in 2011 for $8.5 billion, with eBay receiving over $2 billion.

“Microsoft and Skype together will bring together hundreds of millions or, as Tony said, billions of consumers and empower them to communicate in new and interesting ways,” Microsoft’s CEO at the time, Steve Ballmer, said at a press conference, referring to comments earlier at the event from Skype’s leader, Tony Bates. By that point, 170 million people were using Skype each month. Ballmer aimed to integrate Skype with several Microsoft products, including Lync, Windows Live Messenger, Windows Phone and Xbox video game consoles. Microsoft also got Skype running on its Azure cloud infrastructure.

Skype did not manage to accumulate a billion active users, though.

Apple’s native iMessage and FaceTime were picking up traction on iOS devices. In 2014, Facebook bought WhatsApp, a mobile messaging app, and months later, users gained the ability to place calls across borders. WhatsApp took off globally. So did Tencent’s WeChat.

Skype, meanwhile, implemented multiple redesigns and faced criticism from devotees. In 2016, Microsoft introduced Teams as a distinct “chat-based workspace” for organizations with Office productivity software subscriptions that would compete with Slack, which was then an emerging startup.

When Covid came and pushed people to work and study from home, Zoom, originally conceived for business use, became a consumer favorite for holding video calls. People could also connect on video through services from Cisco, Facebook and Google. Skype did see a usage bump, but Microsoft put major engineering resources behind Teams for companies, governments and schools, and the investment paid off. Analysts began concentrating on the number of Teams users that Microsoft would disclose, with the figure exceeding 320 million in 2023.

As for Skype, Microsoft’s current CEO, Satya Nadella, hasn’t mentioned it on an earnings call since 2017.

In 2023, Microsoft said Skype had 36 million daily active users. That was down from 40 million in March 2020. Teper declined to talk about how many people use the service today, but did say the number of minutes consumers have spent on Teams calls increased four-fold in the past two years.

“I think a good write-up of the history of the thing would mark the shift to mobile and cloud as a significant change in the communications category,” Teper said.

WATCH: What happened to Skype?

A week-long rout in Bitcoin worsened Friday, with the digital asset hitting an over 3-month low, reversing gains that followed the election of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Bitcoin was trading at about $80,500 in early trading in Asia, down 3.45% on the day and nearly 25% lower than an all-time high hit in mid December.

Bitcoin had enjoyed a surge in prices following Trump’s victory in November, with the leader having posed himself as a pro-crypto candidate during his campaign.

However, prices have slipped as investors shun assets perceived to be risky given the weakness in global equity markets, uncertainty surrounding the new President’s tariff policy and resolutions to major wars such as Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza.

Investor sentiment was also soured by news that Bybit, a major cryptocurrency exchange, suffered a $1.5 billion hack in what’s estimated to be the largest crypto heist in history.

“It seems that the market has become volatile in reaction to the Bybit incident,” Jeff Mei, chief operating officer at crypto exchange BTSE said in a statement sent to CNBC, adding that inflation concerns and a pause in Fed rate cuts in the U.S. have also suppressed markets.

Still, some crypto bulls remain positive on Bitcoin’s outlook as they await key regulatory developments from the Trump administration.

Already, Trump has signed an executive order promoting the advancement of cryptocurrencies in the U.S. and developing a national digital asset stockpile. Meanwhile, his administration has created task forces and a “crypto czar” tasked with supporting a clear regulatory framework for crypto assets.

Geoffrey Kendrick, head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered, said in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Thursday that bitcoin could surpass the $200,000 threshold this year.

Increased crypto adoption by institutions along with some “regulatory clarity” in the U.S., should lead to less volatility over time, he said.

—CNBC’s Ryan Browne contributed to this report

House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, sent subpoenas to eight technology companies asking for more information about their communications with foreign governments over concerns that they seek to “censor speech” in the U.S.

The subpoenas were sent Wednesday to the CEOs of Google parent Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and TikTok, as well as X and video platform Rumble.

“The Committee must understand how and to what extent foreign governments have limited Americans’ access to lawful speech in the United States, as well as the extent to which the Biden-Harris Administration aided or abetted these efforts,” Jordan said in a statement.

CNBC reached out to each of the subpoenaed companies for comment. A spokesperson for Microsoft said the company is engaged with the panel and “committed to working in good faith.”

A Rumble spokesperson said it “has received the subpoena and we look forward to sharing information related to the ongoing efforts of numerous governments around the globe who seek to suppress the innate human right to self expression.”

Jordan pointed to the European Union’s Digital Services Act, a similar set of laws in the U.K., called the Online Services Act, and regulations around illegal content and hate speech in Brazil and Australia.

The committee is seeking communications around the companies’ compliance with “foreign censorship laws, regulations, judicial orders or other government-initiated efforts” and any internal correspondence discussing those matters.

The subpoenas come after the Federal Trade Commission last week launched an inquiry into “tech censorship.” FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson said in a statement that the probe will help the agency “better understand how these firms may have violated the law by silencing and intimidating Americans for speaking their minds.”

The FTC’s request for public comment defines tech platforms as companies that provide a range of services, from social media and video sharing to event planning and ride sharing.

The Republican-led committee has previously accused major tech companies of censorship. The panel subpoenaed Alphabet, Meta and other firms in 2023, demanding they turn over communications between the companies and the U.S. government over censorship concerns.

WATCH: Big Tech breadth is a buying opportunity