Yellow.co.nz partners with Skype for free calls

Meet the new, slightly less mellow Yellow. Battling to regain relevance in a Google search world, the directory-formerly-known as the Yellow Pages offers free Skype calls to any of its listed businesses. Hmmmn.

Like last month's move to buy APN's Finda.co.nz directories (ever use Finda? Or its thinly populated sub-brands like menus.co.nz? Nope, me neither), Yellow's latest play strikes me as tepid.

The deal is that if you download the latest edition of Skype - the new version 4 - you'll get free calls, until June 10, to any business listed with Yellow. If it proves popular, Yellow may extend the offer.

Usually, Skype calls from your PC to a regular landline cost 4 Euro cents (all Skype calls are charged, worldwide, in Euros), so there's a modest saving.

But, usually I call a business listed in Yellow from home, on my flat-rate home account. Or I call from my work phone which costs ... well, to be frank I don't know or care. Four cents, schmore cents.

In short, Yellow's Skype deal does not chop my parsley.

Like telcos all around the world, Telecom hocked off its directories business while the going was still good, managing to collect $1.65 billion for its sale of the Yellow and White Pages directories, and their websites, to a Canada's CCMP Capital, and the Teachers' Private Capital pension fund.

By "when the going was good" I mean, of course, before all potential investors clocked to the fact that these days customers don't head first to the Yellow Pages (or Yellow as it's now known. I dithered for a while before deciding to put "Yellow.co.nz" in the headline above. "Yellow Pages" is no longer correct, but few are aware of the "Yellow" brand). Instead, they head for Google.

But the news isn't all bad for Yellow. In fact, it's peripheral deals aside, it's pretty good.

I'd planned to finish this post by repeating a simple test I've done before - searching for simple terms like plumber, electrician and pizza in Mt Eden, then laughing at Yellow.co.nz's sprawling, Auckland-wide, random results compared to more tightly-focussed Google results (which can be more comprehensive, too, in a good way, since the main results are not paid listings).

Last time I did it, a year or so back, Yellow's shocking performance was good for another laugh. Tonight, Yellow delivered a short, focussed list in each category, paired - like Google - with the locations of each business on a map. Yellow gives you address book and trip planner options, too.

Next up for Yellow, if the scuttlebutt can be believed, is a major alliance with Google (the two companies do acknowledge they've been in talks).

Forget Skype and Finda. A major Google Maps alliance, especially with some nifty location-awareness built-in or, say, a Yellow layer pre-installed on Vodafone's coming Magic Google phone, would be the sort of big-bang move Yellow needs to remind people it exists.

But some nifty negotiation skills will be needed. Google has helped raise the profile, and revenue, of many an online site and services, but it's not hard to see who gets the better end of things (hint: Google clears around $US4 billion profit every quarter, while most web publishers are crying into their beer).

Already, I wonder how much Yellow shells out in AdWords each month to keep its name next to the top of Google searches, and its brand on the radar of the the Google generation. Now that's a good business. For Google.