Yahoo adds Skype-like ability to IM service
NEW YORK — Yahoo Inc. is entering a suddenly crowded field, offering Skype-like capabilities through its instant-messaging service that will let people dial regular phone numbers using their computers or receive calls from conventional phones.
Context & Ripple Effects
Yahoo's move lands two months after it agreed with Microsoft to link their instant-messaging networks, a deal that gave the two portals a combined IM audience no rival could match — and voice calling is the obvious monetization layer on top of that installed base. The launch itself was previewed earlier this week by SiliconValley.com, which described low-cost computer-to-phone calling aimed squarely at the fast-growing VoIP market.
The timing is pointed. Bloggers led by Om Malik reported in late November that Skype was suffering momentum-draining employee defections, alongside mounting commentary about regulatory and business threats to the service — so the dominant VoIP brand entered December wobbling just as the portals moved onto its turf.
First-order effects
- Yahoo Messenger users gain dial-out to regular phone numbers and inbound calls from conventional phones, turning an free chat client into a paid telephony endpoint overnight.
- Skype loses its practical monopoly on easy consumer internet calling: the AP notes the field is suddenly crowded, meaning its brand premium now has to survive direct feature competition from portals.
Second-order effects
- Because of the Microsoft-Yahoo network-linking deal, voice features built into one client have a path to spanning both companies' combined IM bases, pressuring Microsoft to match calling capability or risk being the dumb pipe in the pairing.
- Telecom carriers face further erosion of long-distance revenue as portals bundle near-free calling into products tens of millions already open daily — distribution Skype had to buy advertising to reach.
Third-order effects
- If voice becomes a standard checkbox in every IM client, telephony shifts from being a product you choose (Skype) to a feature attached to whatever messaging platform you already use — a structure later echoed when MySpace turned to Skype for voice on its own client.
- The unconfirmed doubts circulating about eBay-Skype integration, layered over the defection reports, suggest the acquisition-driven VoIP land-grab may consolidate around whoever owns the messaging audience rather than whoever owns the calling technology.
The trend: Internet telephony is being absorbed into instant-messaging platforms as a bundled feature, shifting competition from call technology to messaging-audience ownership.