Skype has been making news since the company was purchased by Microsoft. Skype is getting mobile apps for just about every Smartphone out there and some tablet computers, too. Today, about one year after Google decided to merge Google Voice with Gmail, Google is lowering the rates and bringing voice over ip (VoIP) to more than 38 countries. Google made calls within the United States and Canada free for the entire 2011 year and calling other countries was only going to cost you 2 cents per minute, a very cheap phone call by today’s standards.
In the announcement, which you can find on the Google blog, Google said they are adding VoIP in over 38 languages, accepting more kinds of currency as payment and lowering the rates in 150 locations worldwide. The payment for calling credits can be made in US dollars, British Pounds, Canadian dollars or Euros at this point. Yen, rupees and Yuan are still not available, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be in the near future. Calling a mobile phone in France will cost you ten cents per minute, but if you call a landline, the cost is only two cents per minute. Google is clearly trying to get into taking business from Skype.
On the Google blog the statements went a little something like this, “We’re rolling out this feature over the next few days, so if it’s available in your country you’ll see a little green phone icon show up at the top of your chat list and you’ll be ready to make calls (you’ll need to install the voice and video plug-in if you haven’t already).“ Google Apps users are able to get the features as well, but will need to have the Gmail voice calling configured by the admin. If you want to use the features your Google Apps admin is going to have to enable Google Voice and Google Checkout via the control panel in order to use it.
With Skype getting purchased by Microsoft soon, it puts them against Google directly for the VoIP calling business. The more places you are able to call, the more phone plans rise and landlines cost, the more you are going to see the VoIP business grow. It’s no wonder that Google wants to be a part of that piece of pie. Microsoft is likely to battle as much as they can, but will struggle against Google.
