When Yahoo lost the bid to acquire Voice Over IP service provider Skype to online auctioneer, eBay, it decided to taken on Skype head on.
Yahoo has decided to add on some Skype-like services to its Yahoo Messenger service. Like Skype, Yahoo Messenger already offers free worldwide PC-to-PC calling.
Yahoo has decided to add a new paid service to its offerings. According to a Yahoo press release, “Yahoo’s new ‘Phone Out’ option enables users to call regular and mobile phones for one cent per minute in the United States and two cents a minute to about 30 other countries, including calls to Argentina, Australia, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Korea.” Users can also sign up to receive unlimited calls from anywhere for about $30 per year.
By comparison, Skype is offering PC-to-phone calls for 2.3 cents per minute and a SkypeIn phone number costs about $35 per year. By not acquiring Skype in the bidding war with eBay, Yahoo saved itself $2.6 billion last October.
One has to think that this savings has been passed along to the Yahoo customers, in turn, saving them a pretty penny. And a penny saved, is, uh, well you know the rest.
