Yahoo Partners with Jajah for Internet Voice

As Yahoo (YHOO) seems to be going through a makeover in the midst of its takeover fight, the company said it will replace the fairly lame internet voice piece of Yahoo Messenger with a service powered by Jajah.

Much of the general public will say, "What the &*#*! is Jajah?" Short answer: It's a competitor to Skype, with some big-time backing from Intel (INTC). But Jajah for the past year has offered a compelling service that allows you to use Jajah to make international calls from a regular phone by first connecting to a local phone number. More description can be found here.

Jajah is a true world-is-flat kind of start-up -- founded in Austria, it has main offices in Silicon Valley and Luxembourg and a development center in Israel. The Yahoo deal should give Jajah the boost it needs. The Jajah website boasts about its 10 million users -- but really, for a global web service these days, 10 million users makes you a below-the-radar player. Yahoo Messenger has 97 million users. Skype claims more than 300 million users.