Why I Will Not Pay for Skype

On May 10Th an official announcement was made that Microsoft dished out a staggering $8.5 bn to purchase the popular voice-over- Internet -protocol ( VoIP ) company known as Skype. An acquisition that left many people asking as to why such a hefty price was paid for a service that has never had an annual profit. Could this realistically regain the companies footing within the Smartphone and consumer market? Two markets they have clearly fallen behind to other companies such as Apple and Google.

With over 600 million people who use Skype , what does this merger mean for the average user? In all honesty it means very little to someone like me. I am the type of Skype of user who uses the service quite often. However I have never once paid for land-line calls nor do I ever plan to. I am not alone when I say that I use the software simply for the free video calling between other users.

Already speculation has scoured the Internet with hordes of people speculating that Microsoft will omit the free Skype to Skype calling. There has also been talk of the service making its way to the Xbox , Outlook, and other Microsoft services. All while others seem to assume that Microsoft will declare Skype obsolete and disassemble it all together.

Despite speculation, at the moment Microsoft is not saying much about their plans with Skype but express optimism that this bold merger will end on a positive note.

Personally, I do not share Microsoft's enthusiasm. I will never pay for a VoIP service like Skype . In my opinion with all the endless available options there is to communicate, it is amazing that anyone does.

In the younger days of the telephone, a lot of us remember having to pay for long distance calling. A service that is surprisingly still around today even though many calling plans now have unlimited long distance. The reason why companies such as AT&T charged for long distance was because of the resources it took to connect such a call over a long distance. People were limited by the available technology and had no choice but to pay.

Today, it does not take as many resources as it once did to connect long distance calls. As technology advanced, there was less and less need for relying on land-lines to make long distance calls. Mobile phones were invented and people were no longer tethered to their land-lines.

It is easy to say the mobile phone boom all but demolished the once thriving land-line telephone industry. Now, well over half of all Americans have a mobile device as their primary way of communicating.

Once VoIP was invented it gave the mobile phone industry a taste of its own medicine by taking away customers.

Today VoIP services are a dime a dozen. Aside from Skype , one of the most popular services is Google Talk. However the difference is that you can make all calls from Google Talk for free. As great as the concept of Google Talk is, the choices to make audio/video calls do not end there. Customers literally have the pick of the litter on how they wish to stay connected to family and friends.

If video chatting is what I am looking to accomplish, I can easily download another free VoIP service or use a free chat messenger services such as MSN or Yahoo! Two examples of chat messenger services that also provide video calling.

With so many options, why should I have to pay for Skype when I could easily find other new and free methods to communicate? This is the real reason why Skype has never turned an annual profit.

It is apparent the current methods on how Skype is run do not bring in practical revenue. If the fate of Skype were left in my hands to decide, I feel I have an easy solution to fix everything.

I would do away with charging for calls to non Skype users. I would make Skype an ad-based, completely free service.

Surely dropping the charges would revive people's interest in using the service and having it ad-based would bring in profitable revenue. VoIP services do not provide emergency 9-1-1 services, so making Skype ad-based is not too far-fetched of an idea.

Regardless of how Skype will be implemented within Microsoft one thing is very clear. Why pay for Skype when I can get the same results that Skype provides for free elsewhere? If Skype continues to charge for its services I will not be paying for it.