Fair enough. But let's look at the scale of Google compared to messaging using your numbers to prove my point. I don't know what Google's operating expenses a

Fair enough. But let's look at the scale of Google compared to messaging using your numbers to prove my point. I don't know what Google's operating expenses are[1], but I'll use the public income numbers as a proxy, and you can adjust from there. If you look at Google's first quarter 2013 numbers, they pulled in 13.97 billion in revenue, and I'll subtract the 2.96 billion in traffic acquisition costs to come up with 11.01 billion. We'll multiply by four[2] to get a rough estimate of yearly income: 44.04 billion. If we assume that messaging is millionth of a percent = one hundred millionth[3] of Google's expenses, then the total cost to google is $440 per year, so saving 30% just doesn't make sense. If, however, it's one hundred thousandth of Google's expenses (still a ridiculously small amount), then you're talking about $440k of yearly expenses, and you now need to compare a year of salary to 30%, or $146k. At this point, depending on the availability of engineers (whether or not you have to factor in hiring costs) it starts to make a lot more sense. Cheers, Doug #1 and I probably wouldn't be able to divulge them if I did. :-) #2 Each quarter is different, but x4 is a good rough estimate. #3 Your numbers.