Even Google feels the cold of economy and will scale back its party.

"Google Puts the Brakes on Extravagance, Trims Chistmas Party" is the news today by Reuters. We have seen the share price of the darling falling from $7xx to $2xx as well some analysts put the share with a Sell rating due to Google's Search-Engine Marketing Slowing.

How could you imagine this mighty and rich company being under such a pressure even a year ago? The U.S. also the world economies have been really hit hard.

I am using Google (Blogger is its product) to write blog without financial contribution to Google, but not using Google to search any product for coming X'mas (no money for the Ad Words). It could be an evidence of above claim?!

Another way to be rich, but you need guts.

Today I read an article from Yahoo news "Kenya: Somali pirates make $150M in a year". I cut some points here:

...in the last 12 months, ransom to the excess of $150 million has been paid to these criminals and that is why they are becoming more and more audacious in their activities...

...They use satellite navigational and communications equipment and an intimate knowledge of local waters, clambering aboard commercial vessels with ladders and grappling hooks.

Those guys really operate like a modern company. I don't know if they have an IT department :-)

Except Skype, here are some other ways for cheaper/free calls.

Here is a recent article "Stop paying to make phone calls" from ITbusiness.ca. I have never heard about talkster, iCall or Justvoip.

I am using Skype most of time to chat with other people like me (IT professionals) through computers. I know other folks using Skype to call normal landlines/cellphones by paying very low amount money. The quality of Skype is quite good, even the conference among 8 people ( I didn't try more).

Regarding the normal home telephone service, I worked in Rogers before and Rogers Home Phone was my first and only choice. I did like the long distance plan called Whole World. You just need to pay $1 monthly fee and you can call China land line 1 cent/min and cellphone 2 cents/min. It is dirty cheap without hassles of phone cards.

Other choices I know are iTalkBB, Call Select and vbuzzer.

Do you know other cheap/free phone services?