Yahoo said yesterday that a new version of its Yahoo Messenger software (http://voice.yahoo.com/) to be launched in the next few days will include "Phone Out," (eerily similar to SkypeOut) with low per-minute charges for PC-to-phone calls, and "Phone In," a low-cost monthly subscription service for phone callers to call computer users via a traditional PSTN phone number.

What makes this news really interesting is that Yahoo said it plans to charge one cent per minute to Yahoo Messenger users calling the United States from, say, Russia, or anywhere else in the world and 2 cents a minute to call 30 other countries including Australia, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Korea. This pricing seriously undercuts Skype and with this new VoIP competition from a major player this will further push phone call pricing to the inevitable "free" pricepoint.

My only question now is when will Google launched Google Out and Google In (via Google Talk) in response to their arch rival Yahoo? Google has even more cash in the bank if they wish to subsidize their VoIP offering with low-call pricing that undercuts both Yahoo and Skype.