• NY Times, Friday, March 17, 2006 10:15 AM

Goodmail, the company responsible for convincing AOL and Yahoo they should charge marketers for bulk commercial e-mails, thinks it can solve the problem of e-mail spam and fraud by having marketers pay gatekeepers like itself for guaranteed delivery. However, Goodmail's customers, like AOL and Yahoo, now have to prove that their recipients actually want their mail, as the company is constantly checking and probing sender behavior. It also makes it very easy for overzealous recipients to complain about unwanted messages. Too many complaints, and senders will lose their accounts--can you imagine being an e-mail marketer and all of a sudden Goodmail says you can't send e-mail to anyone with a Yahoo domain anymore? In a New York Times opinion piece, Esther Dyson takes an opposite view, saying that charging for e-mail is a necessary step in the right direction for the e-mail industry. If anything can stamp out spam, she says, it's charging for commercial e-mail delivery. Soon, Goodmail will face competition from others and competition will bring prices down to an acceptable level for all, and the industry will move forward. As for nonprofits and other money-strapped charity organizations that rely on e-mail donations, Dyson says Goodmail and others will likely devise a full rebate system for these marketers. As it stands, she says, companies like AOL and Yahoo don't do a good job of ensuring their customers only get the mail they want. Goodmail represents a new idea that could help to that end. Like everything else on the Web, consumers will ultimately decide if it's a good model or not.

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