I had heard about this earlier this week, but today the New York Times had an article explaining how Yahoo! and AOL are going to begin charging email senders to deliver emails to their users that are “certified” http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/technology/05AOL.html (free to read if you register). This is a really really bad idea and the article brings up some very good points.

Here are a few of my thoughts on the subject:
* First, individual users will be subject to this too. Meaning if you don’t pay AOL or Yahoo! to deliver your message, you could be sending a message to your own mother and it will get sent to the junk mail box because you didn’t pay.

* How are the logistics of this going to work? Quite often, I send pictures to our family located around the globe, I just select everyone’s email address, attach the picture, and hit send. So what happens when some of our friends or family have an account with AOL or Yahoo!? I either have to send out two separate messages, One for non-paying emails and one for paying emails, or I have to just send it like I normally do and hope that people check their junk mail box.

* I think AOL and Yahoo! email users are just going to start finding other email providers (like Google or Excite) that will deliver all of the mail they get right into their inbox.

* If this gets implemented, it is going to drastically change the whole structure of the way information is obtained on the internet. Right now, I am subscribed to several different newsletters (like The New York Times) that deliver the headlines right to my mailbox everyday. I doubt that companies are going to keep up free programs like this if they have to start paying for every email that they send to every AOL and Yahoo! user. There options would be to 1) Start charging everyone for the newsletters, and risk loosing most of their distribution list 2) Stop sending the newsletters to AOL and Yahoo! accounts 3) Pay the money and come up with some other revenue stream to pay for the email distribution costs. 4) Stop distributing information via email and develop an RSS feed and tell everyone that they have to subscribe to their feed if they want to keep receiving the headlines (I think they will loose a big portion of their subscriber base if they do this).

* All sized businesses stand to loose a lot with a program like this. According to the article, AOL will charge less to users who send a high volume of email (like Amazon.com, ebay, etc.) and more to small businesses who send less email. This will impact the sales of both sized businesses and affect their bottom line.

I sure hope that AOL and Yahoo! listen to their critics and stop this program. AOL and Yahoo! are the only ones who are going to benefit as a result of this new program because they will be massively increasing their profits at the expense of email users, and all sized businesses.