But there is a potential benefit to some customers. Mainly, those who are bombarded by spam instead of just having enough to cause a nuisance. If you have a few messages a day, that’s not that big a problem. But when facing 60-200 spam messages a day (And I know a few people who do, and who for some reason don’t just start clean with a new email address) most people will tend to trust the spam filters completely, and not manually check for false positive. Meaning that wanted messages, purchase confirmations, receipts, notification about service renewals, etc, may get lost if the spam filter mistakes them. And spam filters are far from perfect.

From what I understand all that the paid messages get is a guarantee that they won’t get into the spam folder, but be processed as non-spam message. So for companies who have customers swamped by spam, this could be a good idea, and could benefit those customers.

Now, should companies pay just to reach those customers who can’t control their email address? That’s indeed an issue, and open for debate.

There sure are are many others problems with the idea, like the incentive for Yahoo and AOL to make their spam filters worse, multitude of other email providers that may join making life very complicated for a company that’s even willing to pay for that, and many more. But it’s not as if there’s no potential benefit whatsoever, as you claim in this post. It’s just a benefit that doesn’t apply specifically to you, or to me.

Lately I have been looking to see if I could find something like RoundCube or Zimbra (AJAX webmail clients) that support POP3. There’s something to be said about hosting your own email service, and sometimes it can be far better.

If AOL and Yahoo do anything that annoys their customers (like blocking legitimate mail from Apple or subscribed mailing lists), those customers will leave. Likewise, if AOL and Yahoo customers start getting more unsolicitated spam from sources who have paid the companies for access to those customers’ mailboxes, it is equally likely that an exodus of users will occur.

If I’m a competitor to AOL and Yahoo and I want to gain ex-AOL and ex-Yahoo customers, I simply implement a saner policy regarding spam. (The incentive here guarantees that the Internet’s mail system won’t turn into another version of the USPS).

Look at it this way: AOL and Yahoo are embarking upon a massive experiment in spam-avoidance / spam-legitimization. And the only real potential cost is to their own userbases.

I, for one, will look on with some mixture of disinterest and amusement. I mean, AOL and Yahoo email are already in the slum of Internet email services. This, worst case, only entrenches them further into that ‘market.’

If AOL and Yahoo do anything that annoys their customers (like blocking legitimate mail from Apple or subscribed mailing lists), those customers will leave. Likewise, if AOL and Yahoo customers start getting more unsolicitated spam from sources who have paid the companies for access to those customers’ mailboxes, it is equally likely that an exodus of users will occur.

If I’m a competitor to AOL and Yahoo and I want to gain ex-AOL and ex-Yahoo customers, I simply implement a saner policy regarding spam. (The incentive here guarantees that the Internet’s mail system won’t turn into another version of the USPS).

Look at it this way: AOL and Yahoo are embarking upon a massive experiment in spam-avoidance / spam-legitimization. And the only real potential cost is to their own userbases.

I, for one, will look on with some mixture of disinterest and amusement. I mean, AOL and Yahoo email are already in the slum of Internet email services. This, worst case, only entrenches them further into that ‘market.’