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Yahoo Hub offers free messaging to anyone, locks horns with RIM and Google
Yahoo, evidently tired of being passed up by hundreds of free messaging apps floating around the various smartphone application stores, has launched a service of its own to take on the likes of BBM and Google Messenger. The new app, called Hub, is only available for Android devices at the moment, but there's a brightside here: you can send a message to anyone, not just other folks who've downloaded the same app. The recipient -- or multiple recipients, since group chat is allowed -- can easily reply to the thread using their own standard SMS service. Curiously, Hub is only offered if you have a US SIM card and a text plan, even though the messages are transmitted using your data connection or WiFi. If you do a lot of international travel, Hub is supported in nine other countries besides the US, a rather small number we hope will grow as the service graduates from its beta status. While Yahoo can use all the help it can get right now, is this going to endear very many users? [Thanks, Ashish]
