Firms want to start charging for emails

AOL AND YAHOO are going to start charging for preferential email delivery, according to a report in the New York Times.

Under the scheme, the two firms will deliver special messages paying between a quarter of a cent to one cent to get them delivered.

But the people wanting to send the messages have to promise they're not spam and people have opted in.

The report claims Yahoo and AOL will be able to deliver them straight to people's inboxes avoiding spam filters. We think that this is a hope rather than a practicality. Spambayes seems quite capable of catching anything that people designate as spam.

And we wonder why anyone would want to pay money by using AOL and Yahoo anyway. Perhaps they hope everyone will take up the idea.

Not that the idea is new - a few years back Microsoft contemplated charging for emails as well. Some people argue that using email runs such a gauntlet of spams, viruses and worms anyway that perhaps using it at all is just not worth the candle. µ

L'INQ
New York Times