AOL and Yahoo to tax email

February 6, 2006

According to the AP, Yahoo! Inc. and America Online, plan to introduce a service that would charge senders a fee to route their e-mail directly to a user's mailbox without first passing through junk mail filters.

The AP states, "The fees, which would range from 1/4 cent to one cent per e-mail, are the latest attempts by the companies to weed out unsolicited ads, commonly called spam, and identity-theft scams. In exchange for paying, e-mail senders will be guaranteed their messages won't be filtered and will bear a seal alerting recipients they're legitimate."

So in other words, Yahoo and American Online, two publicly traded companies will charge for email? Sure, Yahoo and AOL will only charge "so-called" marketers to ensure their emails get through, but my guess is that Yahoo & AOL will "loosen" their spam rules which will catch more legitimate emails, thus forcing legitimate users to pay Yahoo and AOL money to ensure their emails go through thus raising their stock revenue/performance. It's the end of Internet email as we know it.angry

Even if this only does hit "marketers" do I really want marketers bypassing my hosted email provider's spam rules and thus delivering crap DIRECTLY to my main Inbox? I rely on hosted email providers to "weed" out most of the chaff so I'd be totally annoyed if all of a sudden I started receiving spam in my main Yahoo Inbox instead of it staying in the Junk folder where it belongs. Considering both are public companies, there is a definite "conflict of interest" in wanting to increase revenue. Therefore, soon just about everything will be "classified as spam" and therefore require an email delivery fee.

Of course, users could then switch to Google Gmail or Microsoft Hotmail. Unless Gmail and Hotmail jump onboard the paid email gravy train. In fact, Bill Gates proposed "paying" for an e-stamp for email back in 2004, which set of a firestorm of controversy. So certainly Microsoft Hotmail could be next to go the route of pay-per-email "guaranteed" delivery. Soon all the hosted email Big Boys will start requiring pay-per-email. It's a vast conspiracy I tell ya!



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Comments to AOL and Yahoo to tax email


  1. Pat K :
    February 16, 2006 10:49 AM

    I have been told that AOL & Yahoo! plan to tax email. Is there any validy to this or is it an urban legend? Can anyone with any authority in Yahoo or AOLdisclaim or verify this?


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