Removed by Microsoft

There is one thing constant in the world we live in: everything changes. With this constant transformation, Microsoft also sees opportunities to improve the services, apps, and hardware it offers to the public, by discontinuing or —killing— former tools. Here we present some Microsoft products that were removed recently.

Skype for Business

A tool formerly known as Microsoft Lync and Office Communicator will be discontinued in October 2025. If your organization is still using it, we recommend migrating to a completer and more effective tool, such as Microsoft Teams. 

Microsoft Academic

Removed in late 2021, it was a search engine that allowed to filtrate papers and publications. Microsoft will be supporting Open Alex, an open and free catalog of papers, journals, and academic texts.

Silverlight

Silverlight was suspended in mid 2021. Being an app that allowed writing and running internet apps in Internet Explorer 11, it came easily to be replaced by Azure and Blazor WebAssembly, which easily develop apps in several platforms. 

Wunderlist

As a cloud-based task management app, it became easily replaceable by unifying the solutions it provided to a more complete service, such as Office 365. 

Other apps and services killed by Microsoft

• MS Paint
• Windows Phone
• Office Remote
• Microsoft Band
• Home Team
• Office Excel Viewer / Office PowerPoint Viewer
• Mixer
• Zo
• Microsoft Classroom