Window Live Messenger was first released to the market on July 22, 1999. From past decade, the competition has been very high between Yahoo! Messenger and Window Live Messenger although there were some brief glorious moments for other online instant messenger such as ICQ. In 2011 October, Microsoft, the owner of Window Live Messenger acquired Skype as Skype showed sign of increasing growth with huge potential to gain more market share.
The article begins by mentioning the flop of Window Live Messenger in the past few years. The article also states that Skype meanwhile has a surging number of new users compared to Window Live Messenger. Thus, Microsoft chooses to shut down Window Live Messenger and give the option for users to change their account into Skype account.
(https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20222998)
In my opinion, the whole market feature has changed. Decade ago, people can only use Yahoo Messenger or Window Live Messenger to contact and communicate with friends and beloved. But, now with the creation of social media such as Twitter and Facebook, people no longer need to rely only on online instant messenger. Therefore, it would be better for Microsoft to cut off Window Live Messenger as it provides the same service as Skype while Skype has the differentiated service such as calling to phone which Window Live Messenger does not have. In addition, it would be wasting resources to operate two same services or department which may cannibalize each other as they are having same targeted market segment.