The instant messaging program MSN Messenger, developed by Microsoft and kept on the market for 15 years, closed. The company is fully stop supporting messenger on 31 October.
MSN Messenger was first released in 1999, shortly after his version of the program released Yahoo !. The program has been extremely successful - at the peak of popularity it enjoyed 330 million people. This is three times the number of users Snapchat, and about three-quarters of the total number of users of Gmail.
In 2013, she was turned off for most users, since Microsoft has refused further development of online applications for messaging Windows Live Messenger service in favor of Internet telephony Skype, purchased the company in 2011.
MSN Messenger continues to operate only in China, but access to the service will be discontinued by 31 October. Chinese users informed of this in a special newsletter and local media. All users of MSN Messenger will be provided free transition into Skype.
Skype company was founded in 2003. The number of registered users of the service more than 500 million people, and its monthly audience of over 170 million users. To work with the service client programs exist for the most common desktop and mobile operating systems. In 2011, Microsoft acquired Skype for $ 8.5 billion.