Charging Does Help Yahoo Make A Profit

Meshach writes "The globe and mail has an article about how yahoo is starting to charge for their email service. Payment is not mandatory but if you don't pay you have many restrictions on your accont. It says that while many are angry about the change enough people are paying that it is helping Yahoo rebound from their slump. This seems like a recent trend in e-business." The conventional wisdom around web stuff that's been free, but converts to pay is that "they die off, no one wants to use it anymore etc etc", but I think what people fail to realize is that for many businesses, less people is *just fine*, if those people are paying.

Comments

Privacy Policy?

[Psx29]

I hope that yahoo! does not have the same lax privacy policy for paying customers as for non-paying customers

Re:Privacy Policy?

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Why should you care about Yahoo's privacy policy? You didn't give them any real information, did you? I thought every Yahoo user lived on 1313 Mockingbird Lane in Beverly Hills, CA, 90210 and had the phone number 212-555-1212.

Re:Privacy Policy?

[teamhasnoi]

I signed up for Yahoo Mail long ago, and did give them real info. At the time, the world was a more trusting place.

Now, the world is a darker place, filled with spammers, and giant databases. I deleted what I could, and unchecked where it mattered.

I am happy that I didn't sign up for Hotmail. Ugh. That's just a ticking time bomb.

Re:Privacy Policy?

[gothamNY]

How in God's name could that be considered insightful? The original poster mentioned PAID subscribers -- meaning ones that provided their credit card information which is accompanied by address, expiration date, etc. If THAT information is as well guarded as the 1313 Mockingbird Lane information as a paying subscriber I'd be nervous.

Re:Privacy Policy?

[roman_mir]

You also gave them Bill Gates' Visa 4154 2512 2231 5521 10/28?

Re:Privacy Policy?

[BrokenHalo]

This Yahoo user is called Sir Mudge Pinkerton-Bottomley and lives at 42 Bonkalot Street, Didjabringabeer in Western Australia, and his phone number is 9221 1111 (which is coincidentally also that of the Western Australian Police).

Re:Privacy Policy?

[kasparov]

It's nice to see that I am not as unique as I once thought...

Maybe my wife is right about me being a "typical gifted student."

Re:Privacy Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yahoo doesn't let you pay for "value-added" services by money order, cash, or even by cheque -- I've asked them. They only accept payment by credit card. As a consequence, anyone paying Yahoo for e-mail or other services needs to trust Yahoo's famous privacy policy. (You might as well send a cc: Tom Rudge, Secretary, Dept. of Homeland Security with every Yahoo e-mail you send).

Re:Privacy Policy?

[GordoSlasher]

My phone number is 911-555-1212. Still wondering whether any telemarketers have called me.

Re:Privacy Policy?

[grumpygrodyguy]

I hope that yahoo! does not have the same lax privacy policy for paying customers as for non-paying customers


The really interesting part of all of this is that when Yahoo first started, thier service was exemplary. They were effecient, thoughtful, smart, and they implemented a host of useful resources.

Then, like the vast majority of the dot-com companies, the VCs and big-business types pulled the wool over the eyes of the original founders(people like Jerry Yang). Or, put another way, the original founders sold out. After that happened(about 1 year before the dot-com crash) Yahoo's service has continually degraded. That's about 2 years of constant monotonic degradation of service. Now they're insisting on customers paying for a service that was taken for granted 2 years ago?

Understandably the dot-com business model has all but evaporated in the face of diminished advertising revenue. (Ad companies are paying 1/10th what they used to per ad). This coupled with the fact that the stock inflators have all left town or gone broke, pretty much means that Yahoo has very little to go on. This of course is true of almost all the .com's, as the majority of them relied on advertising for revenue. (except sites like e-bay, etc. who are doing fine in this kind of environment).

It's very unlikely that any of this will change, as consumers are more and more fervently seeking out products that will block advertisments. The latest batch of "pop-up" style advertising techniques has pretty much buried any respect the advertising industry ever had in the mind of the consumer. Said another way, advertisers are paying less and less per ad because they percieve how ofter those ads are being avoided. In turn they insist on "eyeball time" and make even more hostile ads. This in turn increases the consumers anger, and the customer finds even more effective ways to block out all advertisements. It's a cycle that bears very little hope for the advertisement based web-business model.

I would suggest that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. But it requires the vast majority of us to embrace 2 distinct technologies. Wireless broadband, and Peer-To-Peer file-sharing, HTTP, and computing.

Those are big hurdles, but in conjunction they appear to be within our grasp:

1) Wireless broadband means buying a dedicated commodity unit for ~$150(before prices drop) that will provide 10Mbps 24/7(does your telco/cable co offer this?). Most importantly, there is no monthly cost...goodbye $50/month to Bell X.

2) P2P transfer of not only files, but also dynamic content like webpages. This would involve a dramatic paradigm shift away from the current client-server model. But with > 100 10Mbps nodes per square-mile in urban areas, and intelligent caching, there's every reason to suggest this is possible.

The client-server model that the "old internet" has relied on is broken. The ad-revenue cycle is destroying quality of service, shutting down many good sites permanently, and we're losing vast quantities of content in the process.

Currently 99% of the server load is on 1% of the connected machines. Leaving the other 99% of the client base Idle. A small investment of ~$150(about the price of a 2nd harddrive, or a new soundcard) could change all of this. Then those 99% idle client boxes could become very powerful P2P nodes.

This is not the distant future folks, it just takes a catalytic moment to get everyone to buy that 802.11X card. It happened to CD-ROM drives, sound-cards, etc. sooner or later a new standard component is adopted. Then the folks at Dell etc. will include one in every standard box they sell. Hopefully this will happen sooner rather than later. Then the OSS/private sector can build HTTP over P2P(challenging, but not impossible within this infrastructure).

I'm sincerely hoping all of this happens soon, because many great web-sites are going down, and we're losing a lot of good content. There's less and less in that Google cache every day, and we need to change that.

Re:Privacy Policy?

[whereiswaldo]

Exactly. I'm a paid Yahoo mail subscriber and I'm sure they give my information out to everyone under the sun. I didn't realize that way back when I signed up. Now that I've fully read their agreement, I think it stinks, and that's stopped me from going with Yahoo's other services such as DSL or Yahoo auctions.
Yahoo provides a great service -- I don't know why they feel they have to invade your privacy *and* take your money. Because of this, I may not renew my email service next time around. But still, it's better than Hotmail.

Re:Privacy Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

WARNING: LoSeR wItH ToO MuCh TiMe PoStInG NaStY UrL ReDiReCt

Re:Privacy Policy?

[Xenius]

While I understand and appreciate the humor behind your post. I think the parent post might have meant something along the lines of email address selling. In the article that was posted recently about "The Spam Queen" I beleive it was mentioned that yahoo sells it's email address database. I really don't think a paying user should be subjected to this, and if they are I don't think they should pay.

Re:Privacy Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should?

deluge them with a lot of information, sort of a civil obedience protest.

Over-obey ad-nauseum.

Re:Privacy Policy?

[ejdmoo]

How in God's name could that be considered insightful? (Score:2, Interesting)

How could that be considered interesting?

Re:Privacy Policy?

[rapidweather]

I pay about $6.00 a month for Yahoo-Geocities, and it's ok, except for the spyware that they put in your pages. Angelfire is cleaner, for your $6.00, and on dialup, takes less time to download and complete the page than Yahoo-Geocities, because of the extra connections, etc. to the extra stuff they put in. To see that, view the source in this page of mine,
http://www.geocities.com/rapidweather/geo7.html
I have no idea why they would have my page connect to the "domainpending" site, unless they want to see how many hits I get on a "free" server, so they can decide if I need some spam about a Domain Name or something.

Re:Privacy Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought everyone used 1337 Haxor Blvd.

Re:Privacy Policy?

[vegetablespork]

While it's not anonymous, Webcertificate could provide you with an additional level of indirection. Create a bogus identity, give it a Webcertificate for its birthday, and use that to pay for its Yahoo account. Or, better yet, just go with a company that respects your privacy and will accept a money order in payment.

Re:Privacy Policy?

[MntlChaos]

one problem- what mechanism exists to prevent access to confidential info. Suppose someoen wants to connect to an ftp server, doesn't that p2p idea mean that actually they might connect to someoen else that connects to that ftp server. how do you ensure privacy when you have higher level routers as you suggested

Re:Privacy Policy?

[evilviper]

This in turn increases the consumers anger, and the customer finds even more effective ways to block out all advertisements.

True. I had been on the internet for a long time before I even started looking for ad-blocking software. In fact, that's one of the reasons I can't stand flash, I have no control of it (can't disable animations, stop them, etc.) and so I removed flash from my life as well.

Wireless broadband means buying a dedicated commodity unit for ~$150(before prices drop) that will provide 10Mbps 24/7

Wireless has a lot of potential. One of which is bringing communities back together (e.g. you begin to interact with your neighbors, rather than some anonymous person, somewhere) primarily for bandwidth and latency reasons. Wireless isn't going to replace the internet, if only because there are plenty of long-hauls where a single jump just wont make it, and then someone has to end up paying to bridge the gaps for us all.

P2P transfer of not only files, but also dynamic content like webpages. This would involve a dramatic paradigm shift away from the current client-server model.

Hehe, dramatic huh? Well, a few are including support for URNs, which are basically ways to stick a link in a webpage that will download a file with the specified hash. That means, you could make slashdot nothing more than a series of hashes, and the content would travel over P2P.

Additonally, even the URN might be unesecary. Perhaps slashdot will become nothing more than a PGP key, and to find the latest, you search for all content signed with the right key. That could give you a nice list format, sorted by date, even.

The client-server model that the "old internet" has relied on is broken. The ad-revenue cycle is destroying quality of service, shutting down many good sites permanently, and we're losing vast quantities of content in the process.

Well, you could argue that the best content is producd BECAUSE of the ad-revenue cycle. Not many people do a lot of work for free. That said, I have published many documents, and there are many free software projects out there that are a serious drain on somebody's wallet (namely sourceforge), that could seriously benefit from a P2P distribution system. So, I'd like to see the features in place, but I don't think it will completely replace the web. Just like I think wireless is important, but won't replace the wired internet.

Re:Privacy Policy?

[evilviper]

One final note I'd like to throw in is that P2P is currently being used to download multi-hundred-megabyte files as fast as humanly possible. A few web pages being published wouldn't even put a dent in the system. It's like the network is always being stress-tested! Now, free software (distros) would certainly be significant enough that it would change entire traffic patterns, but I don't think it would be significant next to the current load being handled by the network.

Subtle.

[saintlupus]

I think what people fail to realize is that for many business, less people is *just fine*, if those people are paying.

Hmm. Sounds like we're in for another harangue on the topic of Slashdot subscriptions in the near future.

I'd happily pay, if you guys would promise to use the money to buy some English as a Second Language courses. Maybe a spell checker.

--saint

Re:Subtle.

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I'd happily pay, if you guys would promise to use the money to buy some English as a Second Language courses. Maybe a spell checker.

What you have to realize is that Slashdot isn't a service. When you pay for a subscription, you're not paying for a service. If that's the way you look at it, you'd be a fool to donate, because the quality of the reporting and the discussions on this site really, really stinks.

You have to think of Slashdot as a charity, like the church or the homeless shelter. By giving to Slashdot, you're helping to keep a bunch of dot-com refugees off the streets and out of the gutters. That's all there is to it.

Which is why nobody subscribes. Charity sucks.

Re:Subtle.

[deander2]

Yes, +5 funny, I know, and yes I can take a joke, but...

I subscribe to slashdot because I read and use it every day, both for personal and professional reasons. As a (yes, employed) programmer, I appriciate the time and energy it takes to no only write and maintain this site, but also supply it with a constant source of usually interesting and relevent news.

I really couldn't care less if there are typos in headlines - Slashdot (for 4+ years so far) provides me with an insanely inexpensive yet invaluable service. The charity here is not you giving to them, but them giving to you.

Re:Subtle.

[AntiFreeze]

Check out Cliff's journal Even Professional Writers Mis-Spell.

Aside from other things, Slashdot does have a spellchecker. It just isn't a grammar checker. It doesn't correct the wrong word spelled correctly (i.e. thing where you meant think). Spellcheckers are limited.

My advice is, if you're reading slashdot for its literary merits, maybe you need to start browsing at -1. In lieu of that, lighten up. And I'm sorry if that sounded harsh, but seriously, if you want to judge slashdot, judge it by what types of stories get posted, by the ensuing conversations, but not by the occasional mistakes of the editors.

Re:Subtle.

[Anonymous Coward]

I subscribe to slashdot because I read and use it every day, both for personal and professional reasons. As a (yes, employed) programmer, I appriciate the time and energy it takes to no only write and maintain this site, but also supply it with a constant source of usually interesting and relevent news.

Do you honestly think being an editor on Slashdot is that hard a job? You sift through the queue of thousands of submissions people send in looking for stuff that's interesting to you and post it. That's it! It sounds more boring than anything else. I'm sure they have other people to deal with the day-to-day logistics of the technical side these days. Slashcode is open source so they don't even need to program if they don't want to.

Re:Subtle.

[Anonymous Coward]

...I appriciate the...

Probably you should save some money for a spellchecker yourself ;)

Re:Subtle.

[Zenithal]

God damn this is hammer on the head of the nail.

I really want to add something intelligent and creative to this parent to make this message seem less like a "me too", but he really nailed this one.

Re:Subtle.

[MacAndrew]

What you have to realize is that Slashdot isn't a service.

So ... it's a disservice?

Hey, I'm cool with that, given how much time I've been wasting, er, spending here.

No, wait, arghhhh&^*#@ [transmission terminated] [account deleted]

Re:Subtle.

[saintlupus]

if you want to judge slashdot,

I don't, especially. I like Slashdot. If I didn't, I wouldn't spend so much time reading and posting here. I just thought that Hemos's comment was painfully heavyhanded.

judge it by what types of stories get posted

Another minor update to the development branch of the kernel! Hurrah!

by the ensuing conversations

*BSD is Dying because of Natalie Portman's hot, petrified grits.

but not by the occasional mistakes of the editors.

Occasional? I used to work in a call center that was heavily staffed with middle eastern immigrants. All of them had a better grasp on the English language than CmdrTypo on his best day.

But hey, I guess its the little foibles like complete illiteracy that give this site its personality.

--saint

Re:Subtle.

[AntiFreeze]

Exactly. There are actual arguments for and against slashdot based on the examples you've given.

As for Malda's grammar, I feel like you're just trolling. I've met Rob in person, and exchanged emails with him, and he has a fine grasp of the English language.

That said, maybe my original post was a little more combative than I meant it to be. I apologize if you took it in such a way.

Re:Subtle.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh come on! They need a grammar checker or a spell checker for their typical two sentence comment? They're not writing the articles. They read what others suggest and then pick the ones they like. They could take one minute to proofread the two "sentences" they write.

Slightly Offtopic: What does a /. sub get you?

[Captain Pedantic]

I'm curious. What benefits does contributing to Slashdot give? Is it just the tingly feeling of helping them out? Lord knows, it hasn't raised the quality of the editing!

Does anyone still contibute?

Re:Slightly Offtopic: What does a /. sub get you?

[LostCluster]

You're buying back the ad space on your own screen. /. serves you ad-free pages with exactly the same content as the freeloaders. But we all know /.'s real business is directing us all towards ThinkGeek.com.

Re:Slightly Offtopic: What does a /. sub get you?

[Tack]

Right now all a subscription gives you is ad-free pages. But, honestly, yes, I think for most people who have paid, myself included, the main motivation is some form of loyalty and desire to help out.

Slashdot definitely has its annoying faults, but there isn't a single website I spend more time on than Slashdot. Sometimes I find myself reloading the front page only a minute after I last viewed it. I am probably the kind of user Slashdot normally hates (frequent reloader), so I am only too happy to pay my share. I'd rather lose $50 than Slashdot, even with all its faults. :)

Jason.

Re:Slightly Offtopic: What does a /. sub get you?

[garcia]

I paid for several thousand pages of subscription viewing. I set it to 7 uses a day. I am usually well over that so the point is moot unless you set down $50+.

Yes, basically I was hoping that if I put some money into /., my annoyances would be heard. I have never directed them solely at Malda as he has enough email to sort through.

All the +4 and +5 posts complaining about Michael and the poor editing I am sure get noticed.

Does it matter if we paid or not? No, it's still Malda's site and he can do what he likes w/it.

The least they could do was change their title from "editors".

If I had money, I would contribute when my subscription runs out. It's not for the lack of ads, it's to keep /. going so I don't have to search elsewhere for SOME of the news I read here.

Just my worthless .02

Re:Slightly Offtopic: What does a /. sub get you?

[jfmiller]

Does anyone still contibute?

Why, yes I do. I enjoy the lack of adds, and I like knowing that I'm helping to keep this site, which I enjoy reading, up and running.

JFMILLER

Re:Slightly Offtopic: What does a /. sub get you?

[jasonditz]

Anyone know what percentage of the $20,000,000+ that VA had in revenue in the past year comes from slashdot donations?

Re:Slightly Offtopic: What does a /. sub get you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe if your were a paid subscriber, and could:

a) post anonymously with a +1
b) Never drop below a certain moderation threshold

I'd pay.

Re:Slightly Offtopic: What does a /. sub get you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't

echo images.slashdot.org 127.0.0.1 >/etc/hosts

also get you ad-free pages?

Thats right!

[Anonymous Coward]

" but I think what people fail to realize is that for many business, less people is *just fine*, if those people are paying. "

Yes, thats the number one thing the dot-com business men and women must understand. You need paying customers in the dot-com industry just like everyone else, volume doesn't help one bit if no one pays anyway.

Re:Thats right!

[ACNiel]

I agree with you. I was very surprised to see that a /. reader made such an astute observation, then saw the italics had already ended.

I really would like to take every "When will they get a clue, and realize they can't stay in business charging for something they used to give away" posts in every article posted about such a case and make the said /.'er choke on it.

It isn't that I don't like the complaining about having to pay for something I used to enjoy for free, I do it all the time. It is the added attitude "When will they get a clue". Especially when it is obvious that it is them that have no clue.

Re:Thats right!

[HorrorIsland]

That reminds me of one of my favorite jokes:

Seems a pair of brothers decide to strike it rich in the watermellon business. They rent a truck, go out into the country, buy a bunch of mellons at $12 a dozen. Then they drive back to the big city, setup a road-side stand, and start selling their mellons for $1 each.

In just a few hours they've emptied the whole truck, and are feeling pretty good about themselves. Then they count up their money. After a moment of stunned silence, the older brother slaps the younger up-side the head: "See? I told you we needed a bigger truck!"

Re:Thats right!

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

" but I think what people fail to realize is that for many business, less people is *just fine*, if those people are paying. "

More accurately, Non paying companys actually cost you bandwidth and resources.
I was talking about this with a friend (who's webpage I host on a soon-to-be hosting company)..
She was joking about how we're going to loose customers because of all the downtime (some mailserver problems badly timed).. I told her loosing our current customers would actually be a net gain because right now they're just costing bandwidth and cpu.

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Money is good for buisnesses profits.

yahoo's information policy

[Gunstick]

Why is that one hears of this first in the news than by yahoo itself. Should be really easy for them to send off a mail explaining the changes.

I even didn't know there is an attachment number restriction.

George

common business plan...

[upstateguy]

Does anyone think that this is unusual or unexpected? Many new businesses (whether drug dealers to that toothpicked chicken pushed in your face at the mall) include giving away samples (in yahoo's case email or other net service) and then making a premium version, weaning off the nonpaying, and incrementally trying to add on additional services for more money.

The problem of going from completely free to charging for the exact same thing is that is ticks off your potential customer base. Therefore the extra's (like Salon or Slashdot's elminating some ads) try to present a 'value added' aspect that makes the rubes reach for their Discover cards. ;-)

I'd only be really surprised if that wasn't a "Plan B" from day 1 or if there aren't more of these new billing plans in the future.

Re:common business plan...

[dalassa]

I have no problem with a web business, or any business that offers a free service and a better pay service. It all depends on how much I want to pay for the features. In most cases I've seen you either have a functional but limited service for free and then pay has faster access or more transfer. If advertising can't pay the bills anymore why shouldn't the purchaser of services and the person who directly puts the strain on servers/support/etc?

Re:common business plan...

[LostCluster]

It's a whole lot better than the business plan followed by other portals who couldn't get ads to pay the bills, bankruptcy.

Doesn't seem worth it

[0x0d0a]

I was sure that this was going to happen for years. Email is perfect for this -- high barrier to change. Get 'em hooked, then milk 'em.

However, I expected that Yahoo was going to offer better service. I would assume that IMAP support, Yahoo not selling your information, etc. would come with this.

There are better email providers, if you're planning on paying money. Take a look at the links on this page, ofr instance.

I expect MS will collect a lot more users on Hotmail from this...

Re:Doesn't seem worth it

[Atrahasis]

Except that Hotmail already has a system like this in place. Subscribers get more options/space.

Re:Doesn't seem worth it

[jmkaza]

Yahoo still offers a far better free service than Microsoft's. Twice the storage, a fraction of the spam, and better features. I won't be leaving.

Re:Doesn't seem worth it

[Anonymous Coward]

FWIW, Yahoo's privacy policy does not allow it to sell your info now. They can only share your info with another company when they gain your explicit concent for specific features -- for instance there is a finance.yahoo.com planning module that is done by AdviceAmerica; they make it extremely clear what will be shared when you sign up for the feature.

Here's the snip from the policy

Yahoo! does not rent, sell, or share personal information about you with other people or nonaffiliated companies except to provide products or services you've requested, when we have your permission, or under the following circumstances:

* We provide the information to trusted partners who work on behalf of or with Yahoo! under confidentiality agreements. These companies may use your personal information to help Yahoo! communicate with you about offers from Yahoo! and our marketing partners. However, these companies do not have any independent right to share this information.

Re:Doesn't seem worth it

[The Snowman]

a fraction of the spam

I get about 20 spams a day. My wife gets about 60. If what you say is correct, it's a good thing I don't use Microsoft's service.

Of course, the only thing I use my Yahoo account for is places where I know I will receive spam.

Re:Doesn't seem worth it

[Kragg]

The fraction is 12 5ths.

Re:Doesn't seem worth it

[Reziac]

Hotmail won't collect more users so long as it continues to have a 2mb mailbox limit, and to require only certain browsers (with js enabled) for even basic features to work right.

I don't have a problem with a commercial outfit *adding* a paid service; what I do have a problem with, is when they take something away from an *existing* free service and think that's an incentive to cough it up. Mostly that just pisses me off, and I'm liable to spend the same money somewhere else instead.

*sigh*

[ArizonaBay]

This sort of stuff makes you miss the good old days when .com's weren't concerned with such trivial things like "profit".

I've just read the article...

[BrokenHalo]

and I fail to see that the "restrictions" imposed on the free email accounts are any different to what they are currently (i.e. 4 Mb storage, limit of 3 attachments)... Anybody care to enlighten us?

Even with these restrictions, it seems to me that their service is still much better than that of a lot of other free email providers.../p

Re:I've just read the article...

[Daytona955i]

I have a 6 Meg limit on my mailbox at yahoo. My big gripe was when they took away availability of checking it via an external mail reader.

However, if you don't mind checking it via a web browser, it's fine. The SpamGuard feature is really nice.
-Chris

Re:I've just read the article...

[Anonymous Coward]

This changed over a year ago.

they didn't used to have the restrictions. And if you pay, you get more storage.

The big one is no more free pop3 access.

too little too late

[linuxislandsucks]

THis is too little too late..

Remember the egroups buy out debacle? Where Yahoo thought that it could buy out egroups and implement ads in every freakign group message and thought that would somehow encourage more people to use those groups and clik on the ads..

The only ones now that use free email are spammers and scam artists unless yahoo is willing to market to them to get the cash its too little too late..

Look at this way most isps offer web email access.. what does a yahoo email accoutn bring to the table in addtion to this...Nothing!

Re:too little too late

[Anonymous Coward]

It brings the ability to NOT have to change your damn email address and send out notices to all your contacts saying "my new email is blah blah blah".

I've had my yahoo account for years and have never needed to rely on my ISP's email accounts (which is a good thing as I've changed ISPs 3 times in 1 1/2 years).

If I could afford another computer and my wife would let me, I'd just buy a damn domain name and have my own computer handle all my email needs.

Re:too little too late

[squiggleslash]

Er, I use Yahoo. It's an email address I can rely on to work and be accessable whereever I am. I can switch ISPs every month and it'll still be there. Most people I know, technically inclined and otherwise, have an account with at least one independent email provider, be it Yahoo, Netscape, Hotmail (*shudder*) or whatever, for exactly that reason.

Personally I don't see what the fuss is about. Yahoo are not, whatever the article says, removing anything from existing Yahoo Mail users, but they are creating good reasons for people to switch. I've been saying for a long time I'd be happy to pay money for POP3/IMAP access if it means I don't have to sign up for spam (previously the only other option) and now it's available, I intend to do exactly that.

I really hope they make a success of it. The "Ads fund everything" model, as well as being bankrupt anyway, doesn't suit everyone. It certainly doesn't suit me. I find most TV channels here in the US unwatchable, radio is beginning to go the same way - even NPR devotes an unhealthy amount of time to "Morning edition is underwritten by the..." spots - and a significant number of websites have become unnavigatable and unreadable because of an obsession with overloading them with ads. Tried visiting your local news channel's site of late?

I'm willing to stump up cash. I did it for Salon. I'd love to turn off the ads on Yahoo in general, though - POP3/IMAP access aside - this doesn't appear to do much in that area. But it is a step in the right direction. I hope they make a success of it.

Re:too little too late

[Julius X]

My solution to the whole email fiasco is to buy a domain name. I bought mine a few years back, and hosted the site on my own system until I moved to an area of "less connection integrity". But anyway, I just use constant email forwarders from my domain to whatever my current ISP is, that way I never have to inform people that I'm changing addresses.

Or- I pay $10 a month, not just for a silly email service, but for an entire webhost including unlimited email :-) Much better deal, I think.

Re:too little too late

[LostCluster]

Not everybody has access to an ISP e-mail accounts. Most bare-bone dialup plans come with only one POP3 account. When mom, dad, and the kids are all using the same ISP, they either have to have one e-mail box for the family, or a majority of the family members have to look elsewhere for a private e-mail box. These people will always have a need for a non-ISP e-mail account of some type.

Finally

[m_chan]

Well, I for one am relieved to finally have the answer to what goes in the number 2 slot of all of those

1. do this
2. ___________
3. profit!

multiple choice quizzes people keep posting on /. I never was able to get that answer and was starting to feel like I was being picked on.

Re:Finally

[rufo]

I still want to find out what the underwear gnomes do for step two.

can only go elsewhere when there is somewhere else

[thegoldenear]

"The conventional wisdom around web stuff that's been free, but converts to much pay is that "they die off, no one wants to use it anymore etc etc""

people can only choose not to use it any more bcos there are alternatives like Yahoo they can instead go to who're still offering it for free

(people could learn to setup their own mail service instead of relying on these multi-nationals to do it for them)

Why pay?

[ALoverOfPeace]

I don't understand why anyone would be willing to pay for e-mail access only. I always thought the use of free e-mail accounts was that they were "throw away" - you use them for sites that require an e-mail address, for posting online, or other situations when you don't want to give out your "real" e-mail address. When you start paying for access, that removes, imo, the only benefit of free e-mail access. Most ISPs also have online ways of checking your e-mail without actually setting up the incoming/outgoing mail servers.

Re:Why pay?

[jmkaza]

How long have you been with your current ISP? Yahoo's advantage is that it's let me keep the same address for years, through a couple moves and a few ISP collapses. It's friends I haven't talked to in years, finding my adress with old papers and still being able to get a hold of me. They do work great as throw-aways, but that isn't their only use.

Re:Why pay?

[anthony_dipierro]

I always thought the use of free e-mail accounts was that they were "throw away" - you use them for sites that require an e-mail address, for posting online, or other situations when you don't want to give out your "real" e-mail address.

Nah, I use my main account mainly for the web access, the permanence beyond ISP switches, and the easy to remember name (no one ever asks me how to spell "yahoo.com").

I could use my inbox.org address for these purposes, but then I have to commit to paying $100/month or whatever to run it.

This Is a FLAME not a TROLL

[Anonymous Coward]

Learn the difference!

• Posts that you don't agree with...
• Posts that are critical...
• Posts that question the status quo...

...are NOT necessarily trolls!

Gee, Imagine That..

[Anonymous Coward]

Charging people for services actually helps companies make a profit! Wow, who would have thought? This could change all the laws of economics!!

Yahoo Personals

[Squeezer]

Yahoo now charges $15 a month or something to respond to ads in Yahoo Personals. How am I supposed to meet women now? $15 a month isn't worth the value of Yahoo Personals. :(

Re:Yahoo Personals

[DesScorp]

If you're relying on lame online dating services like Yahoo, money is the least of your problems. That sounds mean, but if you really want to meet someone, try getting out of your house. If you're going to tell me that there are "no women in my area", I'll only have to assume that you live in Alaska, because in almost all places, women outnumber men. If you continue to say this, you have two options:

1- Get out and look harder

2- Move

Oh well

[eggnogg]

I gave up dealing with yahoo! after they seemed to be going out of their way to tip me over the edge, thus causing my to plumet into the pit of insain web-making and poorly spelt forum posting. egg

this just in...

[peachboy]

this just in from the associated press:
a new study has confirmed that by charging people, you can get money. this revolutionary new business model is being adapted to other businesses around the world as we speak.

Bad news for spammers?

[melonman]

If webmail cost money, wouldn't it discourage people from creating 5,000 addresses a day? Or provide some money to pay for the countermeasures?

Re:Bad news for spammers?

[anthony_dipierro]

Spammers generally don't use webmail to send their spam.

Re:Bad news for spammers?

[Wolfrider]

...Virtually thanking you for your fine virtual coffee... Now can I have a donut?
.

Re:Bad news for spammers?

[melonman]

We have some logistical problems with the virtual donuts because they won't fit through the ventilation grill on the modem.

I would pay as well

[Tomcat666]

My E-Mail address is far too important for me to lose it. The address didn't change the last 3 years, and I would be happy not to change it in the near future.

My problem is that the address is from a Freemailer service (GMX). So if they start to charge for their mail service, and I want to keep my mail address, I will have to pay.

I think that's true for most people using Yahoo's mail service.

Re:I would pay as well

[arvindn]

I think that's true for most people using Yahoo's mail service.

I don't know. For me, for instance, it isn't.

It's a bad idea to use a service like yahoo
as one's primary e-mail address. When some
website that wants to spam me asks for an
e-mail during registration, I give my yahoo
address. I also use it for subscribing to
some mailing lists which I read when I'm
bored. I once found yahoo mail it useful
when I was on vacation and my ISP didn't
have a web interface. But not much else. I use
my ISP's e-mail account with my friends
and relatives and my account in university
for most other things. So if yahoo says
no more free access, I'll just say ta-ta.

It doesn't take a finance wiz to figure
out that they could become a pay service
any day. About a year back, I used to put
some stuff bulky up at geocities as backups.
Then they removed ftp access and forced
you to go through their stupid web interface
which had some restrictions on file sizes.
So I looked for other places, but also
learnt my lesson: don't trust any freebie
providers on the web. I made sure I didn't
use my yahoo account for *anything* that I
cared about after that :)

Misleading Post

[brunes69]

Once again, another overreacting FUD piece on Slashdot. If you read the article you will see that all they are doing is raising the price of their ALREADY pay per use "Yahoo Mail Plus" service, or whatever the name, from 19.95 to 29.95. They are also adding some new features to it like the ability to send email for different domains. They are not "taking away" anything from the standard Yahoo mail service, even though the article tries to paint it that way, by saying that "customers are restricted to 4MB in their inbox", etc. There has always been that restriction on inbox size, and nearly ever WebMail provider has a simmilar restriction. If they didn't then they'd all just become free warez repositories!

Re:Misleading Post

[BTWR]

"customers are restricted to 4MB in their inbox", etc. There has always been that restriction on inbox size

Actually, I signed up for mine about four or five years ago, so I have SIX megabytes of e-mail space (as was the offer back then). YES!

Re:Misleading Post

[BurntHombre]

Actually, I signed up for mine about four or five years ago, so I have SIX megabytes of e-mail space (as was the offer back then). YES!

Same here. I wonder when Yahoo is going to force the 4 MB restriction on all the users who have 6 MB accounts? Still, it's better than Hotmail's pathetic 2 MB limit, which I can nearly fill up with one day's worth of junk mail.

Re:Misleading Post

[Wolfrider]

Yep, I have six as well. Hope they don't change it - but if they do, I'll just have to delete or forward some of the archives in my Inbox. :)
.

Re:Misleading Post

[Reziac]

My Yahoo mailbox is old enough to have a 6mb limit. As I say above, I don't have a problem with them charging for *additional* services. What I would resent is if *existing* free services were pared away instead. But so long as they don't pull that crap, and so long as their mail remains reasonably anybrowser-friendly -- I'll keep them in mind if I ever need a subscription mailbox. Meanwhile, an unobtrusive three-line ad tag on my free Yahoo mail doesn't bother me.

Conversely, I'll never give Hotmail a red cent. Why? because they've squeezed my original 10mb mailbox down to 2mb, send me all sorts of largish crap themselves (funny how their own mailings grew hugely at the same time as the mailbox shrank), and they force the browser and settings of THEIR choice. This does not dispose me kindly toward Hotmail.

I want to know I can count on a service NOT to change terms on me in midstream. If they're willing to squeeze me with free services, chances are they'd be just as willing to make unilateral changes in PAID services.

LOL

[jayhawk88]

So let me get this straight: If my business charges for goods or services, it may make a profit?

Way to reaffirm my faith in true geeks.

Yahoo charging

[satsuke]

As has always been the case with core internet services functionality. There is a bloated way and a smart way.

In this example

If you want:

1. Virtually unlimited storage space
2. Mind bending number of filtering options
3. OS / Platform / Device independence
4. No cost or cost included with monthly access charge.

Than go get a POP3 account from your ISP and only be limited by the limitations of the interface your choose to use.

If your ISP does not have such a service, than there are a small number of free unix workspace accounts out there that do offer it.

Yahoo / Hotmail / AOL email all have variations available for this .. you just have to pay extra to get them

I'm just waiting for the day when Yahoo makes YahooGroups only send to yahoo addresses. On that day there will likely be an exodus of group participation and a sudden interest in majordomo. If anyone here has tried to follow a mailing list of any particular length via the yahoo web interface they will know what I mean.

To Yahoo's credit, when they recently downgraded new email accounts from 6 megs to 4 of storage, they did grandfather people over the limit in with the old limit rather than the new.

Re:Yahoo charging

[marhar]

Than go get a POP3 account from your ISP and only be limited by the limitations of the interface your choose to use.

Don't forget, a lot of yahoo mail users either don't have an ISP or don't wish to be tied to an ISP by their email...

Hotmail vs. Yahoo

[EnlightenmentFan]

Hotmail is already a lot more annoying than Yahoo in the way it tries to push you toward its "premium" account level--msn sends me email almost every few days, promoting some aspect of paid service.

Worse than that, msn won't let me block messages where the From address includes my username, claiming that's the only way they know to send me admin messages. Only about a million spammers use that trick. Hello, Microsoft--think you might hire some programmers to solve that problem for you?

Email important? Just get your own domain.

[RobertB-DC]

I was very concerned about my email address... I had robertb@geocities.com from way before Yahoo! bought out Geocities. But as the spam increased more and more, the geocities.com/yahoo.com address became more and more worthless. The kicker was when some b*stard used my email address as the reply-to on a spam message... first my inbox filled with bounce messages, then with angry messages from recipients and sysadmins.

I changed my reply-to address to the email on my own domain, dixie-chicks.com, and after a few months, all mail from people I cared to hear from was coming to an email address I controlled. The economics are there:

* 12 euros/year (< us$15 even on a bad day) for a domain name from Gandi.net. If all you need is email forwarding, stop here -- they have it.

* 6 bucks/month for a web host like the one I use. Includes no-ad no-popup web space and unlimited web-based email addresses. Not meaning to plug, but they are reliable and cheap.

All together, it's worth $15 a year + $6 a month for a better deal and better service than I'd ever get from Yahoo!.

Re:Email important? Just get your own domain.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no doubt that the service is better but care to explain how $87 a year is a better deal then $29

Re:Email important? Just get your own domain.

[Anonymous Coward]

$6 a month is excessively expensive - you can easily get email hosting (any service that doesn't offer unlimited aliases can be avoided outright) for $2 a month - make it $4 and you can get a decent amount of space for a website as well.

Re:Email important? Just get your own domain.

[redfiche]

I agree, if email is an important communication tool for you, you need take control of the domain and own the address, not just rent it. I see people here complaining that the prices you list are excessive, I actually pay more, but I have a substantial amount of webspace.

I think renting an email address is of very limited value, and I would never pay for an address I could not both keep for the long term and control.

Sadly, Microsloth and their new M$N will probably do much better, as they seem most likely to be a permanent fixture on the internet landscape, and they are offering some measure of control and privacy.

Re:Email important? Just get your own domain.

[an_mo]

My host is Eur 50/year toss in $8 domain registration and I get 15pop emails with webmail access, web space, and all that crap. Sign up a couple of friends and you recover the $29/year with no privacy hassles, and your own domain.

As a longtime Yahoo Mail user...

[teamhasnoi]

I get 6 megs of space for mail. My wife just signed up for it and she gets 4 megs. I believe when it first came out you could get 10.

I wanter her to change for a several reasons.

She was on Netscape mail. It sucks over there! No filters, no checking pop mailboxes, spam up the wazoo, and no customiztion. I could send her a message, and she couldn't find it, buried under all the other messages.

Yahoo is good for people who like their own 'space'. You can change up the background, theme, and mail folders - Netscape had no options whatsoever. She now is changing settings all over, and customizing stuff like crazy. This is good, because she's getting less of a 'I hate computers' attitude, and more of a 'This is cool!' attitude. (Every little bit helps ;)

With all the Klez and its ilk, nothing like having all that NOT on my local machine. I don't have to worry about if Norton got his coffee today. Outlook finally doesn't matter since I can check a couple of pop mailboxes too.

Yahoo is making constant visible improvements to the mail system, making it easier to use, spam free, and nicer to look at.

I recommend it highly. And I'm just using the free service!

Now, the Yahoo Groups on the other hand, parcel info out like its methadone. It makes navigating to find a nugget of what you're looking for into a painful experience. I try to avoid YG and Geocities pages whenever possible.

The mail is where its at.

Why I actually pay for Yahoo! Mail

[jaaron]

Okay, I'll admit that I actually pay something like $19.99 a year to Yahoo! for POP3 access. Why? Glad you asked. Here's a summary:

1. Yahoo! Mail can be access anywhere. (So can most mail, but this is still important.)
2. I can use a browser or a regular email client application (like Mutt or Evolution). The advantages of having POP3 access are important to me. I can easily save my email and I can use the features I need and like from my mail application of choice.
3. When I email via POP3, I have NO Yahoo! advertisements attached.
4. Yahoo! isn't going away anytime soon.

The last one is why I choose to go with Yahoo!. My college email account will one day go away. I don't want to use (can't really) my work email for personal correspondence. I'm likely to move around the next couple of years, so my ISP will probably change (so there goes my ISP email account). There are other free email services, but none are as established as Hotmail or Yahoo!. And that's what it came down to. I wanted an email address that I could give out and not worry about it changing in a couple months, or even a couple years. If I decided to move to anywhere in the world, I would still have my Yahoo! email account. None of my other accounts have that stability. Few other online email providers can guarentee that kind of stability. Of course, Yahoo! could go out of business, or could sell off the email business, but that's a risk regardless of what I choose.

Additionally I find that Yahoo!'s spam filter works fairly well for me (better than Hotmail), it's interface is more lightweight than Hotmail, I can even access it via a links or lynx web browser. You can change your privacy policy settings so that you don't get spammed or sold out and the service is always up. I made the decision several months ago and I haven't been disappointed.

Re:Why I actually pay for Yahoo! Mail

[jmorris42]

> it's interface is more lightweight than Hotmail, I can
> even access it via a links or lynx web browser.

Have you tried it recently? The signin page always gets submitted via https so unless you have a very new Lynx you are screwed.

Re:Why I actually pay for Yahoo! Mail

[jpt.d]

I buy a domain name and provide myself with as many email addresses as I want. It might cost per month what you are paying for a year, but I also get webspace with a load of extra features.

Re:Why I actually pay for Yahoo! Mail

[Smthng]

I had the same problem. I realized that what I wanted was not really POP3 access but a way to download messages to my local mail spool file.

So I spent a few days whipping up a small perl script which works reasonable well, find it here

It actually works better than POP3 because it lets you d/load messages from different folders separately (even the Bulk folder, which as you noted is *very* useful).

Bottom line, if you're already using linux/*BSD, you might want to check Freshmeat.net before going out and buying or coding something that may not be necessary.

Re:Why I actually pay for Yahoo! Mail

[lactose99]

You could just register your own domain name for $12-$15 a year, and use a registrar that freely allows you to alias domain email to any existing POP3 or IMAP mailbox (like 15dollardomains.com, who I use currently). Presto! unlimited email addresses perminantly, that can be redirected anywhere, for the lifetime of your domain, and you're not advertising for Yahoo! every time you email someone.

Re:Why I actually pay for Yahoo! Mail

[pliny3]

i was gonna mod this thread but since nobody has mentioned it yet, i like YoSucker to pull Yahoo mail down to my linux box.

Re:Why I actually pay for Yahoo! Mail

[jaaron]

There's a yahoo! mobile access page that works well with 'links' at least. I haven't tried Lynx in a while.

Re:Why I actually pay for Yahoo! Mail

[Phroggy]

I pay $36/year for Spamcop. In addition to every feature I can think of (pop3, imap, webmail, forwarding, pop3 polling, configurable spam filtering, sender blacklist and whitelist, no ads) I ALSO get more convenient access to their kick-ass spam reporting tool.

Re:Why I actually pay for Yahoo! Mail

[danshapiro]

There's a better alternative than paying Yahoo $20/year. Get your own domain!

The big down side: $50-$100/year.

the up sides:
--email address that's easy to remember, not bobsmith1483@yahoo.com
--permanet email addresses for *all* your family and friends as well (get them to kick in on the $$!)
--you get to pick the domain name
--you can put a web site up there too
--POP or web access
--If the guys go under, you can move to another provider a day later(and are you so sure Yahoo isn't teetering on TU?)

I pay $35/year to register.com for my domain, and $60/year to ICDSoft for my hosting. There are even cheaper options, but for my $60 I get a third of a gig of storage, POP or web email, subdomains, mailing lists, MySQL database, great online tech support, $5 domain registration, no ads, and lots of other bennies. Highly recommended, BTW. And as long as I have $35/year, I'll have my domain.

Re:Why I actually pay for Yahoo! Mail

[grimsweep]

Hotmail spam protection? Ha. It's roughly a single line of code that checks to see if the would-be spammer paid for mailing list 'services' from Microsoft. A small randomization element is introduced just to keep people guessing. Please note, however, IANAME.

Re:Why I actually pay for Yahoo! Mail

[luttapi]

You get all this and you still needn't pay if you use this leech-ware YahooPops (http://yahoopops.sourceforge.net/)

Re:Why I actually pay for Yahoo! Mail

[Anonymous Coward]

Try Nameplanet.com, I've had them for years. Now I have to pay $25 a year and NO SPAM!!!!

Multi-tiered services

[GordoSlasher]

Multi-tiered services can work if the pay service offers significant value over the free service. Hook us on the free service, then entice us with goodies to get to our bank accounts.

I'm relatively cheap so I subscribe to very few web sites (but I do pay for a few). One thing that doesn't work for me is to simply take away the ads. I use Eudora for my email client, and I'm very happy with the ad-sponsered free version. The ads are relatively non-intrusive. So why would I pay for Eudora's ad-free version? There are no additional features, so I don't see the point. As a rule I do not give handouts to such high-tech charities if I don't get significant value in return, so Eudora loses, especially during the advertising downturn.

Web sites and software writers who are contemplating free and premium versions of their products and services need to be sure the free version also provides good value without being obnoxious. Of course, most reputable shareware authors learned this long ago. Don't nag too often or you'll chase away your prospective customers.

Amazing!

[imadork]

A company charges for premium E-mail service while leaving bare-bones, restricted service free, and is still making money!

So, when is Steve going to realize he made a mistake by turning a totally free service used by many into a totally paid service used by few, with no middle ground??

Re:Amazing!

[feldsteins]

and is still making money!

Who say's .Mac isn't making money? I mean I don't know that it is, but who says it isn't?

So, when is Steve going to realize he made a mistake

My guess is that the only "mistake" involved is that many of the services within .Mac aren't very high demand like email. I would rather have seen it be half the price and only the highest demanded services. But I'm not a very good armchair CEO so only time will tell.

Excellent free/paid email provider

[Anonymous Coward]

If you guys haven't looked at FastMail already, you must. It is the most geek friendly email service, providing secure IMAP, POP, SMTP, huge storage, spam assassin, multiple aliases, writing your filters in sieve etc. etc. And they are fast.

Another cool feature is automatic folder redirection, where mail sent to foldername@username.fastmail.fm goes to the specified folder directly. Very good for creating new email addresses on the fly for online subscriptions. I use amazon@myusername.fastmail.fm for amazon, for example. Excellent for keeping track of who is selling your email address.

The customer support is unbelievable and you get real responses from a human usually within a couple of hours.

No I don't work for them, just another happy paying customer.

yahoo is a company

[SystematicPsycho]

Yahoo is a company that is responsible to shareholders and therefore companies need to make a profit. I don't think it is the case of yahoo getting ppl on board for free and then whacking them with a 'pay or else'. Besides, are other 'free' services around.

Don't confuse a service with something else...

[Shivetya]

Yahoo is providing a service here in the form of email. That provides a logical reason for someone to want to pay them.

They are not charging for content, that is what fails. Many places that gave it away do find themselves in a lurch when they think they can charge for it. The problem most of those sites have is that they don't offer a compelling reason to pay.

Free as a bad business model...

[FearUncertaintyDoubt]

People have remarked that changing the terms from free to pay will piss off their existing potential customers. While this comparison may not be perfect, it reminds me of a friend who owns a laundromat. Like any consumer retail-type business, you have to be very concerned about the store environment. One of the fads in the business was "free dry." The dryers are free, and you mark up the washers enough to compensate. The free dry is supposed to attract customers -- in retail marketing terms, a loss leader.

However, the catch is that free dry attracts the lowlifes. What happens is that seriously selfish moocher-types come in and split up their wash among 10 dryers at once. Other people get pissed off, some possibly because they wanted to pull the same stunt. Sometimes people even get into fights over this. Now the average guy who just wants to do a wash and dry and go home is thinking, screw this place. And he's the customer that the laundromat wanted all along, but now it's left with the worst customers.

So my friend, said, no way am I putting in free dry. The fact is, the lowlifes drive out the good customers. And businesses are very much concerned about keeping the lowlifes away while catering to the paying customers while staying friendly to the honest-but-not-yet-committed customer. It's a delicate balancing act, and businesses that try to extend themselves to attract customers (e.g., free e-mail) can get abused by the moochers, which can seriously affect costs and threaten the business. So when someone says, "you're going to piss off the people who are getting it for free," the answer will be, "if they were just trying to leech off me, then screw 'em. If they're a good customer, they will be willing to pay a reasonable price."

Re:Free as a bad business model...

[Reziac]

A simple solution comes to mind: For every load of laundry washed, have the washer's coin-op thingee give back a dryer token as "change" (of course this would require that someone manufacture or modify such a coin-op unit, but it wouldn't be brand new tech).

The customer could use the token, give it away, sell it, or whatever, but there would still only be X-many dryers in use for every load of laundry washed, because the supply of dryer tokens would depend directly on the number of paying customers.

How this could apply in the internet world, I dunno. Anyone care to run with it??

Re:Free as a bad business model...

[evilviper]

I quite agree with this post, but a few things needs to be understood... as this is very different than the real world.

First, this is not where one is marked up to cover the other. You are not leeching by using it for free. Also, by using their free service, you are still contributing revenue in a less direct manner.

Second, they were the ones that made the claim that everything could be free, and then they gradually take it away.

Third, e-mail addresses take some time to change. If they were to anhilate their free service, many people would be so dependant on it that they would be forced to pay. It's like tying you phone number to a cell-phone service provider. AT&Ts charges go up, but to switch, you have to change your phone number... not good. That's why cell-phone operators are being forced to allow consumers to keep their numbers when switching services.

Finally, I have to say that yahoo's prices are patently unfair. In some cases I've seen them charging more per-month than other service providers charge per-year (for better terms).

Yahoo is obviously trying to make some people so desperate that they don't care about the money, and at the same time, trying to take advantage of consumers that just don't know any better.

Re:Free as a bad business model...

[dolo666]

This post was pretty interesting. I read it during metamod and thought about some business practices that are going on and on, that cater to driving away business.

One such policy is at local video stores when they are willing to drive away business to try and make money on long term late charges. I know it's hard because the video rental business needs to have every video in the store for other customers, but if you've got seventy copies of the latest blockbuster, how are late charges warranted?

Instead, rental companies would be smart to only charge late charges on customers when there are no other copies in the store AND the movie is late AND only when there are no other copies in the store. You would see that most custmers might stop playing the shop-a-video game, going from store to store racking up late fees if the policy was less inept. You would also find that a policy like that ("take your chances") would work out to be a way better business model in the long run, since customers would know damn well they screwed up, IF they had to pay charges, and the mom&pop would not lose business from people taking their video, returning it three weeks late only to never come back AND never pay the bill!

Another type of business faux pas is when they tack on extra service charges to make money the sneaky way. There is a really good article about sneaky billing HERE.

But... but...

[Pig Hogger]

less people is *just fine*, if those people are paying.

But... But... This runs counter to the kind of wisdom harbored by "market share-obsessed" marketing types!!!!

Re:But... but...

[sco08y]

You've got to understand that your and Hemos' view is valid now but back then things were different. Before the collapse, the various companies were vying for market-share because they knew that at the end the companies that had market share would be the only ones standing.

Sort of like Highlander, "In the end, there can be just a few."

Like a drug dealer

[nurb432]

"the first ones always free"

An internet model that makes sense

[Junior J. Junior III]

1. Charge people money.
2. ????
3. Profit!

No longer just spelling

[lelitsch]

Hemos, please get a quintuple espresso, read the following sentence out loud, see if you can understand it yourself, and rewrite in something approximating English:

"The conventional wisdom around web stuff that's been free, but converts to much pay is that "they die off, no one wants to use it anymore etc etc", but I think what people fail to realize is that for many business, less people is *just fine*, if those people are paying. "

Re:No longer just spelling

[Reziac]

It's in code. The trick is to skip every other word.

Re:No longer just spelling

[sco08y]

I dunno... It seems to me that more coffee would just exacerbate the problem.

It doesn't have to be this way!

[FreeUser]

Yahoo is right to do this. They provide a service at some expense and have to recoup their costs.

This is true of anyone offering a service. Now, perhaps the costs (e.g. for my own web page, http://expressivefreedom.org) is low enough that the cost is simply donated, but in that sense that cost is recouped from my day job.

The current client server architecture of the web (which BTW stands in start contrast to the underlying peer-to-peer architecture of the internet itself) places almost all of the cost burden on the publisher. The more popular a web site (or email service, or IRC server, or IM servcie, or what have you) the more bandwidth they need to buy, the more servers they need to cluster together, etc. They have no choice but to recoup their costs or stop offering the service, and if advertising is no longer sufficient (costs have outstripped that line of revinue), then customers will start to have to pony up.

But what is often ignored is that there are architectures where the costs are shared and distributed.

USENET was an early implimentation of this (still costly, because ALL the data is copied to ALL of the distributed servers), where everyone doesn't go to ONE server, they go to ONE of THOUSANDS. USENET still carries more data than any single website (even groups.google.com, which is merely an archive, not a stream of information).

FreeNet is a better implimentation, where data which is in demand is replicated to caches closer (in terms of routing metrics) to those wishing to see the data. The originating site bears only the cost of making the inforamtion available (and providing a small portion of their local drive and bandwidth to cache other unrelated data) ... the more popular the data becomes, the more widedly it is distributed, the more available it becomes, all the while adding no additional cost to the providor. The cost instead is shared in tiny increments by everyone, in a barter system of essentially perfect effeciency.

Restructure the web on a P2P basis, as FreeNet is doing, and you don't just get the Anonymouty and Uncensorability it was originally designed for, you get the scalability and low cost (regardless of popularity) of participation which the web in its current, client server form, will never enjoy.

FreeNet does dump old information no longer in demand (least popular, oldest first), a la USENET, but that is easily corrected by the one intersted in providing said information ... for there is nothing preventing a static copy being preserved on your own system, to be reloaded into the net when the old copy expires.

Were Yahoo running on such an architecture, it is likely that their add revinues alone would be more than enough to cover all their costs, and there would be no need to begin charging for their other free services. They might choose to anyway ... greed seems to know no reasonable bounds these days, now that we've elevated it to diety status ... but the bar would be very low for hobbiests and enthusiasts to step in and offer a free alternative. Adopting such an architecture would go a long way in keeping the net free, in both senses of the word.

Unfortunately, there are powerful media interests who do not want to see a world of peers exchanging information, they want to see a new channel by which they can dump their dreck into our minds, while keeping us placidly on the couch where we belong. So, if such a change is going to occur (and with the release of FreeNet 0.5 the software is certainly available and usable), it will have to be because people like us, at the grass roots level, prefer an even playing field to the centralized, "read what we tell you" architecture cable companies, media cartels, Microsoft, and large content providors are tryig to foist upon us instead.

Re:It doesn't have to be this way!

[MyHair]

Very good point about peer-peer distribution. The availability increases with demand.

A big potential problem I can see is the cost for the peers. We're already seeing some ISP implement bandwidth caps. If we take this concept to the extreme example of everything becoming peer-peer then I would expect consumer bandwidth costs to skyrocket, at least for any constantly utilized p2p nodes.

Another problem may be reluctant node operators. I just recently read into FreeNet. I feel a bit unconfortable with the idea that my node may be used to assist with untraceable kiddie porn or cult/nutty militia propoganda or other material that I find objectionable or even illegal. (Read the FreeNet faq about this very concern and counter points.) I'll probably get over this and give it a try, but I expect many others won't get over it.

This would be an excellent model for much of the type of things we read on Slashdot, such as a geek with a cool project and a low-bandwidth server that gets pummelled for two days and then is far less busy afterward. A FreeNet-distributed site would respond to the demand but not cost the author additional money or grief. Or perhaps a programmer starts and open-source project that gets ignored until version 0.4 and then people notice it does something cool and works and then the demand skyrockets. Typically projects have to relocate to handle the traffic, but no relocation would be necessary in a FreeNet-like distribution system.

The real irony with this story is that mail is peer-peer, anyway. Yahoo is basically charging for high availability online storage, otherwise you could just have a service that knows when you're online and points to your local SMTP agent when you're online. The sender's SMTP agent already holds the email if the receiving server is unavailable and retries periodically. The only problem with this would be if both sender and recipient ran their own SMTP agents and were never online at the same time.

Re:It doesn't have to be this way!

[alienw]

Sir, you are completely wrong. The client-server model is ALWAYS more efficient: you don't have to waste resources on coordinating your p2p nodes, and the server can have as much bandwidth as needed. Any p2p network works like a pyramid scheme: each active user has to have 10 other inactive users actively uploading stuff to him in order to get even a halfway reasonable download throughput. That's fine if everyone has a high-speed, 24/7 connection but never uses it for downloading files, but that's not how it works in real life.

Also, I beg to wonder: have you actually tried USING freenet? It is absolutely unusable, incredibly slow, and didn't work for the most part when I tried it. I am not even going to talk about the liability of possibly having illegal files stored on your hard drive without your knowledge or control.

The Internet will become inexpensive only when bandwidth costs fall dramatically, and no p2p solution will change that.

Re:It doesn't have to be this way!

[Anonymous Coward]

Were Yahoo running on such an architecture, it is likely that their add revinues alone would be more than enough to cover all their costs, and there would be no need to begin charging for their other free services.

All you have done is taken the same servers and moved them around the country. Now you'll need to have contracts with 10 times as many service providers and oh by the way we now need a system that can synchronize dynamic content across all of them. Well done - you clearly understood the problem.

Re:It doesn't have to be this way!

[FreeUser]

All you have done is taken the same servers and moved them around the country. Now you'll need to have contracts with 10 times as many service providers and oh by the way we now need a system that can synchronize dynamic content across all of them. Well done - you clearly understood the problem.

Yes, I did very clearly understand the problem.

You, obviously, do not. Nor do you understand what peer-to-peer means, beyond a catchy buzzword you associate with mp3 filetrading, nor do you appear to understand what the word "cache" means.

Content is only moved as it is demanded. Synchronization can simply follow the hash keys to wherever the material is cached. Oh, you want to update it? Fine, push out a new node with a new key, cross reference it to the old key and expire the other key. Some people may still get the old data until the new content propogates, but at least they can get it.

And if you want truly dynamic content that changes moment by moment, with no propogation delay, (a la' an idealized (read: not real world) game server), then I humbly suggest the Internet is not the medium you are looking for. Or, alternatively, stick with your client-server architecture (which doesn't deliver on that promise for any significant loads anyway, without serious and costly engineering, and watch your site crawl and your costs skyrocket, while the rest of the more intelligently designed web runs circules around you. Good luck trying to compete with that...

Re:Amazing! Virtual Mod point for you...

[teamhasnoi]

I can't believe it either! I started to use the service at work, was starting to like it and find uses for it - then *poof*. All gone. Sure, I could pay $100 bucks, but why? I have email, and an 'iDisk'(Briefcase) as a FREE Yahoo Mail user. The intergration was swell, but not worth 100 bucks.

Is this another status thing? I don't need that kind of status.

Steve must have had some powerful drugs in the office that day. What do all the "Switch" commercials have in common, what do all Mac users say? "It just works."

Well, It doesn't work anymore.

Re:As a longtime Yahoo Mail user...

[ZeLonewolf]

I would also recommend Bigfoot, which has all those features, and depending on what level of service you want, only costs $5-$10 per quarter... The service is decent, and the spam filtering is quite good - and you can forward them any spam that does get though and it'll get caught next time. There's also a free email option available as well, for those that don't mind filtering out the ads and spams themselves.

Current Paying User

[chicagothad]

I have been a paying user for Yahoo mail for about a year now. This service has been around for a while...they are just branding it now.

I think the service is terrific. I get POP access (can't get that with Hotmail) and Yahoo's filtering for spam beats the hell out of Hotmail (which I think was designed to collect spam).

The interface is great and they continue to add features. If you don't want to pay extra for these features, then don't. You can still use the service...just not get the extended items.

Also, don't most people get free email when they get internet access? I think only the people surfing from public libraries would find this an issue.

Re:Current Paying User

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not just a rebranding -- the new service gives you more features for slightly more $$.
http://mailplus.mail.yahoo.com/

Re:Current Paying User

[The Cydonian]

I get POP access (can't get that with Hotmail) and Yahoo's filtering for spam beats the hell out of Hotmail (which I think was designed to collect spam).

Not to support the Evil One (tm) here, but you can check your Hotmail inbox in Outlook Express 6, for no added cost. The spam filter is no great shakes, but it's tolerable.

Also, don't most people get free email when they get internet access? I think only the people surfing from public libraries would find this an issue.

First, everyone, repeat after me:- Yahoo is not cancelling its free email service. It's not even restricting its existing customers, merely increasing the price of its value-added email services.

Second, you'll be surprised by the number of people who have no telephones, but constantly use email. Yes, all of them use (the free-as-in-beer flavors of) Hotmail, Yahoo and the ilk.

I pay

[magic]

I pay for a Yahoo! mailbox and am very happy with it... except that even if you are a paying customer, they still show you ads.

The Flash ads tend to crash older browsers and the non-Flash ads often have women in bikinis in them. I don't need pictures of semi-naked women showing on my monitor at work, thank you. I wish Yahoo! would get rid of the ads for paying customers.

-m

Re:I pay

[GordoSlasher]

One word: Proxomitron

When web ads started getting too obnoxious, I started running ad blockers. I don't mind ads that stick to the margins where I can notice them or ignore them. I do mind when they make noise just by moving the mouse over them, pop-up over other content, pop-under and force me to click, distract me with animations, or distract me with boobies (in the workplace especially!!!!).

I am amazed that Yahoo would force ads at paying customers. I would never pay for a service that displays disruptive advertising to its subscribers.

Go back to simple magazine-style advertising and I will stop running ad blocking software.

Re:I pay

[BTWR]

I would never pay for a service that displays disruptive advertising to its subscribers.

Um... isn't that the model for basic cable? Nickelodeon used to be commercial free (according to last week's Newsweek) but then changed to a commercial channel. No one complained, however, I see your point, and this one may not be a correct analogy. If HBO started having commercials...

Re:I pay

[Anonymous Coward]

"I would never pay for a service that displays disruptive advertising to its subscribers."

What about cable television? I seem to remember a big hoopla about commericals being really loud compared to the actual shows on TV...

As one who pays for this service...

[reynolds_john]

I'm pretty unimpressed for my $19 per year.

Yahoo gives me only 6mb of email space, and constant ads asking me to 'upgrade' my service for *another* $9.99/yr for only 25mb more space!

Everything else on that service is for pay. If I go log in right now (oh yes and turn off Privoxy) even though I am a paid member, I am still faced with a myriad of flash and java ads. Then there is the giant ad at the bottom when you log in telling you that for $29.99 a year you can get more space, and more this and that. Then finally there are two separate links for mail upgrades on the front of the email page.
Worse yet, my wife also pays for an account, but we get no added benefit of having two paid for email addresses.

The only reason I kept this mail address is the same reason you keep cell phones; we have no loyalty to the provider, but isn't it a pain to switch addresses? I've had this email account for years.

And.. what's the alternative? Hotmail? No thanks. One of the reasons I pay Yahoo is because it's cheaper than running my own email, and it's much more reliable than many others. However, I think that their price points for $9.99 are 1999 customer expectations. Everything is obviously throttled and tiered for marketing, and it sucks.

Let 'em charge

[Robotech_Master]

The only thing I use my Yahoo account for is reading YahooGroup mailing lists that are too traffic intensive for me to want to yank them down to my personal mailbox anyway. Oh, and participating in the PepsiStuff promotion whenever they're running it. Doesn't matter to me if they give me four megabytes or a zillion, or let me send 3 attachments or 300; I've got an account on a friend's always-on personal Linux box to receive email, and that's good enough for me.

Yahoo is just fine

[xZAQx]

In a world full of companies like Microsoft, yahoo isn't really that bad. When I first moved out of my parent's house, I needed a new e-mail address, and one that would stick with me whenever I changed ISP's. I found out that yahoo provided free POP3 access (this was 1999 or 2000, btw) so I went with them. I was able to get a short, easy-to-remember e-mail address, with free POP3.

So I was happy.

Whenever it was that yahoo first announced they were no longer offering free POP3 access, I wasn't put off. I know many people were, but really, it was like 10 bucks per year; even my broke-ass can afford that.

True, yahoo mail has a SLEW of spam. But they also add a header XYahooFiltered Bulk to each message with their proprietary filter deems as spam. I've been able (quite easily) to configure Mozilla mail and Evolution to filter based on this header, and dump all the spam in the trash. It works like a charm.

Re:Yahoo is just fine

[hedley]

Actually thinking about it, one way for Yahoo to increase revenue is to disable the Bulk folder for the free accounts. Only enable it for the pay ones. The worst case for them is just lots of 6mb mailboxes full of spam. If they market it well they could lure people over to the "Spam Free" pay service. I am sure many users would be happy to get away from spam and be willing to pay for it especially if they use the Yahoo account as a primary email location.

Hedley

Re:Yahoo is just fine

[Anonymous Coward]

I couln't agree more. Yahoo offers all of the REAL services that people are interested in (like the ability to pop mail) and they are always up, always available. I don't mind paying a reasonable price for a good service.

Re:Yahoo is just fine

[Reziac]

I've had my Yahoo account about 4 years now, and it has yet to get its first piece of spam. But I've never used the address in public.

non-work e-mail address

[No Such Agency]

I currently work for a university, and my internet access is through their dial-up server (free!). I have an e-mail address through my employer, but I don't feel it's appropriate to use it for some tasks: eg. personal e-mails to friends, and online shopping etc. I've had my Yahoo account for years, since going to grad school at _another_ university, where I also had e-mail provided. I moved, my e-mail address stayed the same.

At any rate, I'm fine with 3 attachments per message and 4 MB of space. For now at least, and if I ever need more, I'll pay. It's not much.

Free Dry

[No Such Agency]

Your friend should have put up a sign saying "Free Dry. Max. 2 dryers per customer". Granted, I expect laundromat employees wouldn't be keen on enforcing it, but it'd be the only way to make it work. In terms of free e-mail though, the server can monitor free accounts for abuse (ie. spamming) constantly, and cancel the obvious abusers. The paying customers have a "key to the deluxe dryer room" where the dryers are bigger and have more heat settings, and there's complimentary fabric softener and comfy chairs.

Re:Free Dry

[FearUncertaintyDoubt]

You're right, in that it is possible to make a system work there. However, pull back a bit and look at it. The system is now more complex, there's more risk, and requires more effort to run just to handle the free situation. Is it worth it? Are there other things to put resources into that will be more profitable?

In this example, I think the free dry becomes so laden with rules, and so much trouble to adminster that it still may not attract any good customers, and possibly drive some away. And if it does work, what kind of return on the additional costs do you get? Instead of fooling around with free dry, what if you put in a big screen and played DVDs while people were doing their laundry? That might prove a hell of lot more profitable.

One way to sum up a large part of the dot-com bust is to say "you can't make money giving away your main product." Now, there are exceptions (television programming comes to mind), but I would still argue that the rule is generally true. We're seeing a general drift away from free content and service on the web. They are slowly weaning the public off of free and on to pay-for-service. If they go too fast, they threaten to shock their entire customer base. So they take small, calculated steps in which they realize that they will lose a number of customers. But they are trying to do it in such a way that the people they lose are people who would never pay anyway. And in that case, losing that person is often a benefit because it reduces costs that will never generate revenue.

Re:Free Dry

[No Such Agency]

"...you can't make money giving away your main product." Now, there are exceptions (television programming comes to mind)"

Just in case you actually read this... I think television doesn't give away its main product. A broadcaster's main product is eyeballs. Our eyeballs. They sell this product to advertisers, for a lot of money. Their programming is only "free" for us in the same sense that farmers give wheat "free" fertilizer. Payback comes when it's harvest time, or when we conciously or unconciously make purchasing decisions based on the ads we've seen. I don't mean to be pedantic here, I'm just saying it like I see it. Your points about weaning the users off of a free service are valid, it's like the old saying about slowly boiling the frog, right? :-)

Re:Free Dry

[throwaway18]

>what if you put in a big screen and played DVDs while people were doing their laundry? That might prove a hell of lot more profitable.

Profitable for the MPAA when they sue the proprieter for unlicensed public performance of their copyrighed works.

Re:Free Dry

[Deven]

Profitable for the MPAA when they sue the proprieter for unlicensed public performance of their copyrighed works.

That was my first thought also. Of course, they could try to negotiate for such rights, but I doubt the publisher would be interested.

On the other hand, he could get DirecTV; they have plans specifically designed for Business Viewing Areas which would be legal. They don't seem to offer premium channels like HBO (not surprising, I suppose), but they offer plenty of sports channels, which could draw quite a crowd.

Here in Cincinnati, there's a business which is a combination nightclub/laundromat -- customers routinely do their laundry in the presence of a live band! Why not a combination laundromat/sports bar? That could be a hit!

Re:Free Dry

[Deven]

In case anyone doubts the existence of a bar/laundromat, check out Sudsy Malone's website...

HOw much of Yahoo's "sales" are tie-ins?

[Animats]

SBC is now bundling Yahoo's so-called "services" with DSL. They install adware and spyware, then insist on an EULA that doesn't let you remove the stuff. How much of Yahoo's "sales" are actually based on that?

Re:HOw much of Yahoo's "sales" are tie-ins?

[biobogonics]

SBC is now bundling Yahoo's so-called "services" with DSL. They install adware and spyware, then insist on an EULA that doesn't let you remove the stuff. How much of Yahoo's "sales" are actually based on that?

I managed to upgrade my dial up to SBC-Yahoo without using their install kit by going to a web site (very well hidden) for people with computers not capable of running the install kit. Setting up DUN and IE was easy - mail was not.

Yahoo's server authentication broke my old Eudora client. Ultimately I had to switch to Outlook Express (Bleah). Moving a subsidiary mail account went through a very intrusive sign up process.

Now I can get my e-mail on the web but even though I am paying for the account (through my ISP), I still get the usual ads and trash.

Believe it or not, this is an improvement over SBC's previous match with Prodigy!

virus scanning?

[no_op]

One major perk of Yahoo mail (and Hotmail) is the virus checking that occurs on incoming mail and when attaching files.

This option should be a big money saver for small businesses since most virii are email-born. And most small businesses cannot afford to employ someone to keep their virus software up-to-date.

I think that Yahoo uses Norton to do virus scanning.

Re:virus scanning?

[feronti]

Hmmm... double-click NAV icon in the task bar, go to LiveUpdate, click update definitions. That requires a lot of technical know-how:)

The sad truth is people think they need to pay someone full-time to take care of that.

conventional wisdom??

[Servo]

No, conventional widsom says that 1) You can't make a profit giving things away for free. 2) When a free service starts charging for access, yet remains worthless, they won't make a profit.

Just because there is value to a service which is free does not mean it will retain its value after no longer being free.

Apparently Yahoo's email service has proved to be worth paying for. What they've done is made it value added, so you are actually paying for something slightly better than the free option. That's good business sense. Maybe other businesses can learn from Yahoo instead of the "bait and switch" ploy that most places seem to be going with.

YaHoo's still in business?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all about control.
ISP options dwindle, it's impossible to get
anyone to route a small network anymore, Google's
co-opting usenet, SPRINT can't move a packet
to save their lives (mobile IP), the net kiddies
are dedicated followers of fashion in the form
of smash and grab on-line anarchy while playing
into the hands of the radical rights control
agenda. The business of the internet is moving
packets. AFAIC, the money I pay to have my bits
moved is distinct from all the 'value-add-crap'.
But, in the end, the crap is gonna be all you can
buy and you'll have to sneak your bits around it.

What I want to know is what happened to iiaf.net
Laying low?
Run off by misguided net-militants?
Google cache gone as well.

-uncle444

Slashdot explores spamming

[Animats]

Slashdot has an advertising deal with a spammer. Check this out.

At the top of this page is a T-Mobile ad, "CmdrTaco, founder of Slashdot, recommends..." , served from "168.143.181.42". If you look at that IP address, it's a raw directory, and you can look around. It turns out to be a spammer's system. Content for both banner ads and spam runs are in there.

Check out the directory htmlemails. Especially http://168.143.181.42/htmlemails/test.html, which has stuff like "This e-mail was sent to you by {XXXXXXXXXXX} on behalf of SimplyWireless.com. You are receiving this e-mail because you registered with {XXXXXXXXXXX}, and agreed at that time to receive special offers via e-mail. If you wish to unsubscribe from this list, please send an e-mail to XXX to be removed immediately."

So there it is. Slashdot has a spam operation as an advertiser, and it's officially endorsed by CmdrTaco.

Re:Slashdot explores spamming

[bmetzler]

and agreed at that time to receive special offers via e-mail.

Agreeing to receive emails hardly makes it unsolicited.

-Brent

Re:Slashdot explores spamming

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreeing to receive emails hardly makes it unsolicited.

Spammers say that all the time (since apparently you have never received any). Then they follow by saying oh but we're so sorry if you did not wish to receive this, please use this bogus opt out email address.

-Kevin

Want to pay but can't pay.

[gargle]

Yahoo requires a "security key" to sign up for paid services. I forgot my security key - some gibberish I entered more than four years ago when I first created my account. After being put on hold on the Yahoo "help line" (on an IDD call!) for more than 15 mins, Yahoo's not getting my money.

Re:Amazing! Virtual Mod point for you...

[EvilStein]

Not sure if this is just a troll or not.. but if you already had an iTools account, it was only $49.99.
The $99 price is for brand new users.

Yahoo may be free, but most certainly doesn't include the .Mac features.

Not misleading

[Galvatron]

First of all, they're constantly fiddling with the restrictions on attachments. I know that it wasn't that long ago that, as long as you had the email space, you could send and receive attachments of any size. Now, I believe, it's less than 1 MB.

Second, 4 MB total size is fairly recent, as in, sometime in the last 18 months. When I signed up for Yahoo, a couple years ago, I was given 5 MB, and this was upgraded to 6 MB about 2 and a half years ago.

Third, there were a number of reductions in service earlier this year, including, most notably, loss of POP3 access.

You are correct that there are no particular losses of service that prompted this article. However, the article is correct that over the past year or two, Yahoo has been slowly degrading their free mail service.

OMG!!

[Anonymous Coward]

This just in: walmart has made a press release announcing that selling their products for money will cause them to make profit!!

Imagine...

[newestbob]

...how different the world would have been if, for example, Geocities gave you a free page for the first 90 days, then a few dollars a month if you didn't want it deleted.

It would have been a sustainable business, instead of a rotten and nearly gone wart in Yahoo's portfolio.

Back in thos Crazy Internet Days, those dot-com kids beleived that NUMBERS were more important than paying customers. They thought it would have been better to say: "Look! We have 400,000,000 users", rather than to have 500,000 paying customers.

Yahoo personal address

[claes]

Does anyone here use Yahoo personal address service? It allows you to connect a personal domain that you own with your yahoo email account. You can easily choose what address you want to send from when you compose your email, and you get both email to foo@yahoo.com and foo@bar.com to your email account at Yahoo.

I use it and it is a pretty convenient way to get your _own_ email address and be independent of the email provider. If Yahoo email start to suck, I can host my email myself, but so far it is far more convenient to let Yahoo do it.

What I wonder is how this new pay service works with the personal address service.

Re:Yahoo personal address

[Michael Wardle]

I have been a Yahoo Personal Address customer for about 18 months now. When I first subscribed, I felt it was one of the better Internet mail services provided by a major company, plus I could register a domain name so my mail address was me@mydomain.com rather than an account @yahoo.com, which is often disallowed for registration and disregarded in some serious contexts (such as an employment application).

Unfortunately, the Web hosting portion of this package (provided by Yahoo GeoCities) turned out to be less than desirable (for instance each page has advertising tags added which breaks my pages' W3C XHTML compliance), and basic mail features I found myself increasingly wanting (such as IMAP access) were still not forthcoming.

The short story is: I tried to change to a different provider and redelegate my domain name, but neither Yahoo nor Melbourne IT (the registrar Yahoo registers domain names with) would release my domain name or allow me to redelegate it.

Provided I remain with Yahoo, my domain name will continue to work, and I will receive some sort of mail service, but be warned that your Yahoo Personal Address may not be as permanent as you would like if you want to change provider.

The whole saga also made obvious Yahoo's dreadful customer service. Despite having at one point been entitled to priority customer support, I have found both their regular and their priority support dreadful.

Is anyone aware of a service similar to Yahoo Personal Address provided by another company?

Re:Yahoo personal address

[Anonymous Coward]

I have had the same thought. I, too, am a Y! Personal Address user and a paying POP access customer. Meaning that I am already paying $29.99/yr. The ad copy at (http://mailplus.mail.yahoo.com/compare) does suggest an ability to send mail from other domains but I am not sure how this works with or separate from Personal Address. Hmm....

Does anyone? I think I am going to take the plunge and upgrade to find out. In the process, however, I am going to lose my 6mb inbox if I ever downgrade...

Something people actually want.

[Trump]

Oddly enough if your service is actually valuable, and not something that 100s of other sites are offering services for free people will pay for it.

Darksunonline.org is asking for donations and getting quite a few of them. Why? Because the product is actually pretty good. It's no wonder that all these joke sites that post little more than the latest AllYourBaseAreBelongToUs fad lose 100% of thier customers when they try to charge.

Yahoo is not charging me for my Yahoo mail

[DJ FirBee]

Maybe I am just lucky. I have had a email account for over a year now with Yahoo for free. You get five megs of storage and access to yahoo groups for free.

It has worked alright for me. Especially when I was overseas in Europe.

The pay stuff gets you more space and blah blah.

I have other Yahoo accounts set up when I don't want to be spammed on my primary account.

I am not working right now and I am leeching my wireless access so no pop or imap for this loser

This is why we need P2P email

[anthony_dipierro]

Of course, that would require everyone to start using PGP.

myway.com

[terryfunk]

Well for my 'money' leave yahoo.com and try http://www.myway.com/ Has the same interface and then some and the email is free.

free customers pay too little

[kraksmoka]

when the web was new, we all thought that email accounts, access to magazines and all that stuff would mostly be by subscription, with universities, governments and non-profits supplying the majority of free services. i signed up to hotmail when it was new and the promotion was the first 50,000 signups would get free email for life. what a bargain!

that said, there is nothing wrong with pay services on the net. without money, the free ones who thought if they come we will advertise have bit it. the people who pay also support the restricted freebie people. this is what the mature web will look like more and more. $30 a year is alot cheaper than my hosting for two months, a good buy for cheap people.

I wonder how dot-Mac is doing?

[dpbsmith]

Apple infuriated many of its customers by initiating a $100-per-year fee for iTools, rechristened .Mac. Supposedly Apple a) only expected 10% retention, and b) claims it has been a great success.

Many Mac users mistakenly, but IMHO very understandably believed that Apple had promised the service would be free forever. At the time a lot of people reviewed QuickTime files of Steve Jobs' keynote, but "free forever" never showed up--I think myself it was a conflation of "it's the only email address you'll ever need" (translation: it has forwarding capability) and "it's free" (for an unspecified period of time).

I suspect it's too early to tell. I'm inclined to be skeptical of Apple's claims of success. For one thing, a number of late moves sound like desperation measures (they extended the "deadline" for signing up, cut the price for the first year to $50 for existing users, and sweetened the pot with various offers such as free photo prints).

However, many .Mac users appear to be disappointed by the quality of the service. Various lapses (slow response, downtime, etc.) that were tolerated when the service was free are not when the service is paid for.

And I think this is the Achilles heel of many "let's start charging 'em" schemes.

The real test will be, not how many iTools subscribers convert to .Mac, but how many .Mac subscribers renew at the end of the first year.

Re:I wonder how dot-Mac is doing?

[Anonymous Coward]

I once subscribed to a joke email that was sent daily. The owner had 100k or so subscribers. he moved to a pay based email and clearly stated that if he kept 1% of his mailing list at the price he chose he'd make the same money as he was on ads.

I think it's a can't loose situation for most huge sites like yahoo, MSN and a select few others.

The bean counters say that 2% will pay $x per month and we'll be better off than we are not charging anyone. I mean they get to cut back on service for 98% of the people, load 98% of the banners and get more income from the other 2% how can you loose?

I left yahoo because of their charges

[joshv]

They made the accounts more restrictive, took away free POP access, and then decided to charge too much for too little.

I looked around and found fastmail.fm - an excellent web/IMAP mail provider which integrates flawlessly with outlook or Mozilla/netscape mail. I pay $20/year and get something like 10 times the space I could get for the same price at yahoo. I also get the very cool email alias feature, where people can mail be at anything@myaccount.fastmail.fm. When web sites ask me for my address I sign up as say "slashdot@myaccount.fastmail.fm" - this way when I get spam I can tell who abused sold my email address, and block it based on the To: address.

Anyway, look around, there are many high quality email providers out there who charge much less than yahoo, and provide a heck of a lot more.

-josh

Re:I left yahoo because of their charges

[NineNine]

Well, I hope for your sake that "fastmail.fm" (which I've never heard of) stays in business, otherwise, you're gonna be switching email addresses soon, and as anybody with email knows, that's a royal pain in the ass.

Re:I left yahoo because of their charges

[joshv]

Well, I hope for your sake that "fastmail.fm" (which I've never heard of) stays in business, otherwise, you're gonna be switching email addresses soon, and as anybody with email knows, that's a royal pain in the ass.

Wow, you have never heard of it. It must be shady then. I think I'll go back to yahoo. Thanks.

-josh

Yes, being a Slashdot editor is a difficult job.

[Futurepower(R)]

Yes, being a Slashdot editor is a difficult job. Slashdot is popular because of the intelligence of the stories posted. Yes, the editors don't know English very well, and have a negative attitude, but they are also very good at selecting articles people want to read. See other sites for comparison; the content is mediocre, but spelled correctly.

Wait what?

[sielwolf]

but I think what people fail to realize is that for many businesses, less people is *just fine*, if those people are paying.

What are you saying? Some profit is better than zero profit? Are you on crack?!? We all know this from Geek Economics 101:

1. Free Web Services.
2. ?????
3. Profit!

Musical Chairs - Everyone left standing pays.

[DivideByZero]

I think what people fail to realize is that for many businesses, less people is *just fine*, if those people are paying.

I think it helps to have already survived the first N rounds of free-providers-collapsing-under-their-own-weight.
If there were the same quality, free providers available now that there were five years ago, the users would just switch - I mean, that's how Yahoo GOT all those customers, isen't it?

Paying is easy, cancelling is hard

[tuffy]

I've spent the last five months trying to cancel Yahoo's premium service, but they still keep charging me their fee every single month. You can't send a message to their online help system without some sort of Yahoo account (which I no longer have) and the only phone number is long distance (and typically with a 1+ hour wait on hold). Disputing the charges with my credit card company every month is getting more than a little tedious, also.

In short, don't buy any sort of Yahoo premium service. There are plenty of great services out there with better tech support; I recommend using one of those instead.

Re:Paying is easy, cancelling is hard

[zogger]

--just a thought, but close out that credit card account and just get another one then with a different number. they won't be able to charge you then.

Conversely, take them to a local court, if they don't show up with a real human being you *win* handily, maybe the judge will award you significant damages and you can then charge THEM for their hassle.

I wonder why more folks don't do this to onerous software companies with eulas that change in midstream? Small claims court, magnified by a million people doing it? hmmm...

Re:Paying is easy, cancelling is hard

[tuffy]

That particular card has a very large limit, so I'm a bit reluctant to cancel it for another one :-/ I've mulled over small claims court, if only to document and expose Yahoo's incompetence, but that's an awful lot of work for the $9.95 charge per month. Fortunately, this month my credit card company is sending a more forceful letter to Yahoo this time around, so I'm more hopeful something will actually get done.

Interestingly, the reason I decided to try Yahoo's service was because I thought that a larger company might give better support in case something went wrong. Yet the service I'm using now and the binary newsfeed I pay for are both small companies that have great support. So, I guess if my little tale of woe has a moral, it is that one is often just as good, or better, sticking with small companies (that have no choice but to be accountable) to provide services than with larger ones (like Yahoo).

Re:Paying is easy, cancelling is hard

[Buran]

Why not instruct your card company to charge back all attempts by Yahoo to cancel your service? After getting whacked by charge back fees ON TOP OF getting reverse-billed for each of the monthly payments, they should eventually get the idea. Call your card issuer.

This kind of thing is one of the major benefits of having a card. And just think -- if they get enough chargebacks, they'll eventually have to pay more for being able to accept cards, and if it gets really bad, get their accounts rescinded.

Those protections are there for you, not just the big companies.

Re:Paying is easy, cancelling is hard

[Michael Wardle]

I was a Yahoo Personal Address customer (which has a yearly fee), and was enticed by the extra features offered by Yahoo GeoCities Pro (which has a monthly fee plus a signup fee). The upgrade to the GeoCities Pro service did not work, but Yahoo's customer service representatives did not want to refund the signup fee I paid to activate the GeoCities Pro account.

After several more canned responses from their support department, I mailed Yahoo Billing explaining the situation and spelled out the relevant clause or advertisement that stated a full refund would be given if the account was not activated within the stated timeframe. The first few times, my request was refused, but it seems that eventually my message reached the right staff who actually knew my rights, and I was given a refund.

The advice I can give:

• contact the billing department rather than the technical support department.
• find the relevant section of your contract or terms of agreement that allow you to cancel your service and quote it.
• quote your former Yahoo account name in all correspondence.
• be persistent.
• don't use Yahoo again. their customer service is terrible. if something goes wrong, it will not be quickly resolved.

I would also suggest contacting Yahoo by paper mail and contacting the relevant consumer affairs department/business ombudsman/trade secretary or whoever you would contact in your area if the matter goes unresolved.

You might also like to consider creating a new Yahoo account so that you can easily contact their support staff, as their real addresses are quite hard to come by (it's almost like they're avoiding customers!)

Paying for web services

[jez9999]

The conventional wisdom around web stuff that's been free, but converts to pay is that "they die off, no one wants to use it anymore etc etc", but I think what people fail to realize is that for many businesses, less people is *just fine*, if those people are paying.

I think it depends entirely on the service. Some are far more appropriate to being charged for than others. For example, I pay an annual charge for my e-mail account and I'm pretty happy with it, but I wouldn't dream of paying for websites. I think they should be funded by adverts.

The reasons are that
1) E-mail is ONE service, whereas there are *millions* of websites. You can't be expected to pay a seperate fee for each site. I don't want to, anyway. OK, a choice of paying to remove ads is fine as well.
and 2) Websites are a much more natural environment for advertising. If you receive your e-mail through POP or IMAP, you aren't going to see any banners unless they're sent to you (pseudo-spam). Ads can be integrated into websites and I *personally* have no problem with that.

But anyway, Yahoo! are keeping their free e-mail service; this one appears to be merely an additional service they're offering, no one seems to lose out much.

Spam!

[Anonymous Coward]

*@yahoo.* isn't that the pattern that has appeared in my spamblock for ages?
I wouldn't know anyone with a valid yahoo address...

Business Plan

[MalleusEBHC]

!. Do this
2. Do that ...

9. ???^H^H^HCharge money
10. Profit!

Damn, who would have thought that this whole time the way to make money was to *gasp* charge for your services?!

4) Profit!

[dpdawson]

So, apparently for Yahoo it goes:

1) Provide free email.
2) Apply restrictions to said free email.
3) Charge to have restrictions taken off said free email.
4) Profit!

How clueless...

[LostCluster]

Wireless P2P to save the day? I don't think so...

Slashdot would be dead in such a world. The whole point is that we are all accessing the same database, therefore can read and respond to everybody else's comments on the issues of the day. Just how many hops will it take to get back to a centralized server? Imagine the "can't-get-there-from-here" situations. You'll get 10 mbps connections to your neighbors, not 10 mbps connections to the content you want to see. There's a reason why 99% of the server load falls to 1% of the machines, they're the ones where the good new content is being published.

The real price in web content isn't the delivery, it's in obtaining the content. It takes a decent staff to put together a magazine, and those same people need the same pay of they're going to do it as an e-zine too! The problem is not in the delivery, it's in the cost of content creation. Decentralizing to a P2P structure that carries no ads will take away the incentive to write in the first place.

This just isn't gonna happen, dream on...

Re:How clueless...

[grumpygrodyguy]

The real price in web content isn't the delivery, it's in obtaining the content. It takes a decent staff to put together a magazine, and those same people need the same pay of they're going to do it as an e-zine too! ...The problem is not in the delivery, it's in the cost of content creation. Decentralizing to a P2P structure that carries no ads will take away the incentive to write in the first place.

Many of the best sites that still survive are written by hobbiests for hobbiests. Is there a better example to this than Slashdot? These are people who have so much genuine enthusiasm for a particular subject that they practically fall over themselves writing these sites. Ironically many of the worst sites on the web are those who employ salaried writers. Principally because there's so much product placement and mis-information.

Imagine the "can't-get-there-from-here" situations. You'll get 10 mbps connections to your neighbors, not 10 mbps connections to the content you want to see. There's a reason why 99% of the server load falls to 1% of the machines, they're the ones where the good new content is being published

You're right of course, that it's a very difficult problem. But I disagree when you say it's impossible. 802.11A has the potential to deliever 100Mpbs, and some of the new spatial division signal technologies could push that number through the roof to the Gbps range. All of this stuff has passed the proof of concept phase, it really exists. So if you have 100 clients per square mile, with ~50Gigs free harddrive space and > 100Mpbs transfer rate. That's a very potent recipe for success.

If just one guy in your city refreshed the "newest" copy of Slashdot, that means you only have to hop over to his box to get a copy...rather than making 45 hops to get to the source. There could be designated super-nodes and repeaters for this kind of thing...not hard to do.

Re:How clueless...

[LostCluster]

Ironically many of the worst sites on the web are those who employ salaried writers. Principally because there's so much product placement and mis-information.

Hobbiests can have their own agenda, and they can hide it better because the connection doesn't have to be out in front of you. Besides, almost every hobbiest site now has some form of adversting link to pay the bills... if they're an Amazon.com affilate and they're recommending a book, did the webmaster read it? How do you know?

So if you have 100 clients per square mile, with ~50Gigs free harddrive space and > 100Mpbs transfer rate. That's a very potent recipe for success.

Faster isn't better. It still doesn't protect you from people jamming the frequencies or inserting false data in place of the real file being requested.

If just one guy in your city refreshed the "newest" copy of Slashdot, that means you only have to hop over to his box to get a copy...rather than making 45 hops to get to the source. There could be designated super-nodes and repeaters for this kind of thing...not hard to do.

And even cooler if we design a high-bandwidth and long-distances protocol especially for linking the super-nodes to each other. Hey, wait a second, we're basically reinventing the MAEs! I thought P2P stood for peer-to-peer... and now where running into why the Internet was built to support P2P, but usually operates as client-server instead.

Re:How clueless...

[NDPTAL85]

Slashdot is a horrible example. The site doesn't make up its own stories, they just link to others who did. Others who were most likely paid for it.

Yahoo! Spades

[BTWR]

I used to play in their games section all the time. Now, if you want to play in the "Ladder" games (where you are ranked) it costs $$$. I don't think that this is mean or vile of them, but I can subscribe to so many cool things for $10/month (or whatever it costs...) that it's just not worth it to me. On the other hand, if they get 5,000 people to buy year-subscriptions, then that's a lot more money than 1,000,000 people paying $0!

p2p != profit

[AmVidia HQ]

It is true the p2p model and architectures such as FreeNet is ideally better in everyway the Internet ultimately represents, the fact that the "website" is distributed throughtout such a network is a big no to busisness. Imagine the web applications along with all the data that make up Yahoo is "freely" distributed in all parts of the p2p network. Free as in beer. I see FreeNet has appeal to things persoanal and academic, but the p2p model is not for business. Unless you can think of another 3-steps way to Profit....

Pop'n Yahoo

[bent300]

Haven't tried it yet, but this looks like a promising way to pop your yahoo account: YahooPops

Re:As a longtime Yahoo Mail user...

[radicalaxis]

10 megs? You must be kidding. I got it in 1998 and it only offered 3 megs at the time. Around 2000 they upped the space to 6 megs, which was nice. But I still wish they had better spam filtering, though. About a third of my spam doesn't get caught.

What more are you getting...?

[BurntHombre]

...for the $19.95/year subscription? You mentioned the 6mb of email space, which I get on my free Yahoo account (although new subscribers only get 4mb). What does $19.95 get you?

Re:What more are you getting...?

[reynolds_john]

The only real benefit of it that I have been able to tell so far is the ability to use a POP3 client such as Outhouse Express, or Outlook, which my wife uses.

I use KMail w. Yahoo, and it works fine. Retrieveing through POP used to be free, btw. They changed that in order to force more hits on their sites from non-paying customers.

Customers

[buss_error]

but I think what people fail to realize is that for many businesses, less people is *just fine*, if those people are paying.

I once fired 7 customers... and my billable hours went up 35%. Now I was doing about the same amount of work, but was getting 1/3 more money.

Some customers are too expensive to keep if they keep getting a free ride. The 7 in question here kept turning in call backs on things outside the scope of work, and demanding that these items be "fixed" before they would pay for the previous work. Since it's my policy not to bill for work the customer doesn't accept, it was getting too expenseive to let these keep sucking on the tit. So it was Bubh bye for them.

One kept calling back, wanting more work done, and I finally told him that I felt that my competitor could better serve their needs. "But they won't come out to us anymore!" they said. "I won't anymore myself", I said.

And other perks!

[Corvaith]

I pay $10 for my service--but I also run a forum in that space. Even without that, though, I think I'd be paying for email from someplace else. I happen to be very fond of the one I have, which gives me...

--My own domain and no competition for email usernames, and therefore an address people have a prayer of remembering.
--Basic webmail when I need it--and POP3/SMTP the rest of the time.
--As many email addresses, forwarders, and mailing lists as I want, all completely ad-free.
--SpamAssassin, with the ability to edit my configuration to match my needs.

There are a lot of places where you can get better services than Yahoo's for extremely affordable prices. I wish more people would look around for them.

reminder: the year is 2002

[Anonymous Coward]

"yahoo is starting to charge for their email"--oh really? since when, like a year or two ago??

what the fuck? and charging people makes money? I didn't know that! with this secret key knowledge maybe i can start a business of my own now. thanks...

Yahoo DOES have free POP3 access.

[Futurepower(R)]

Yahoo DOES have free POP3 access. Yahoo is like American pharmaceutical companies. They push American customers to the wall, but sell for reasonable prices in other countries.

Yahoo in other countries has free POP3 access.

spelling nazi

[seelet]

many restrictions on your accont right there. plz cmdr_taco or whatever yer fucking name is teach one of yer fucking faggot homo buddies to spell. goat.se anouncement. have a gaping day.

Remember uReach?

[Lagrange5]

The uReach service started in ca. 1999 as a pioneer of sorts in integrating free e-mail with free voice mail, and gave each signup a toll-free number and extension for voice messages.

I signed up early on, and it didn't take very long to figure out that the actual quota (not alluded to in uReach's signup) was 30 MB. uReach's intention was to allocate most of the quota for voice mail, but that wasn't enforced, so my friends and I never used our uReach accounts for anything but e-mail.

The 30 MB space was so generous (five times that of Yahoo Mail, whose 6 MB was generous then) that for about two years my uReach address was my "only" address. At one time I had archived about 24 MB worth of stuff, mostly attachments. In addition to e-mail, I was using my uReach account as a dirty kind of file transfer and storage system.

Therein lies the problem for uReach. My friends and I were only a few of probably tens of thousands of uReach users who used the service for e-mail, file storage and transfer, and nothing else. uReach could not keep up with the increased usage and increased costs of providing the service. So eventually they had to start cranking the screws on its user base. First they yanked the toll-free access number, and I think the voice mail feature likewise disappeared. Then they offered a premium service with increased space (I think it was 100 MB!). Finally, they abruptly scaled back the free e-mail quota to 6 MB. So most of us who had 10, 15, or more MB of stuff on uReach were left in the lurch. Now I don't use uReach for anything except the occasional "yoo-hoo-I'm-still-here" login to ping the account.

Point is, it's simply taken Yahoo longer to arrive at the economic possibility that free e-mail services may not be free forever.

Not cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Use some other area code, asshat. Abusing 911 is only funny until your ass is in the shit.

Obligatory troll

[Anonymous Coward]

You are stealing service using MIT resources.

You are no better than David LaMacchia.

It's not even a clever hack.

A great alternative to Yahoo

[Tuxinatorium]

MicrosoftSucks.org is a fully functioning webmail service, with all the features any other service has. But unlike Yahoo, there's NO SPAM, no ads, no banners, or any other annoyances. It's completely free with no advertizing support. It's awesome. Plus you get an address @microsoftsucks.org, which is nice. :)

I think it's run by some linux philanthropist guy, because whoever runs it is obviously not making any money from it, since there's no advertizing or spam at all.

Re:A great alternative to Yahoo

[MiloTin]

Yes, its FREE he doesn't make money. Well unless he's Bill Gates, he might not be able to keep it running forever! Daewoo Cars are pretty cheap now, you know why? Because they're going under and you'll be left in a lurch in a couple of years when your transmission gives. You shouldn't go with someone because its FREE. or Ad Free. You should go with someone because they'll be around.

You're misleading too

[LostCluster]

The POP3 access was never "free". Before, you had to agree to allow them to spam that POP3 account with "Yahoo Delivers!" mail, if you dropped that they'd drop your POP3 access. Additionally, anything you sent through them would have a "bottom line" ad attached to it.

Re:You're misleading too

[Galvatron]

The POP3 access was never "free". Before, you had to agree to allow them to spam that POP3 account with "Yahoo Delivers!" mail

Wait, okay, let me get this straight. You're saying, "it wasn't free, you just didn't have to pay for it." Is that right? Advertising supported counts as free in my book. I consider Slashdot to be free, and I consider broadcast TV to be free. Also, the "Yahoo Delivers!" spam was very infrequent, once a week if memory serves, which was hardly a drop in the spam bucket (and easily filterable anyway).

Re:You're misleading too

[LostCluster]

Yep, pefect example of "free as in beer".

I wish Yahoo Mail were entirely https

[Michael Wardle]

One of my gripes with Yahoo Mail is actually that I can't read my mail from start to finish in an entirely secure session, especially since I've started to see advertisements for software that lets certain groups (such as employers or ISPs) capture information from popular Web mail providers such as Yahoo Mail and MSN Hotmail.

not less people, fewer people

[djtack]

I'd happily pay, if you guys would promise to use the money to buy some English as a Second Language courses. Maybe a spell checker.

Amen to that. Remember people, less is for continuous quantities (less water), and fewer is for discrete quantities (fewer people).

YahooPOPs.

[BrookHarty]

Saw a neat program that allows you pop yahoo email for free. Yahoo Pops opensource, windows and linux source. This program converts your pop email to webemail, you point your email client to it, and it then goes to the website and pulls/posts your email.

Neat idea. Thou I wonder what happens if they change the look of the website. (OR if its CGI based.)
-
The squeaking wheel doesn't always get the grease. Sometimes it gets replaced. - Vic Gold

Advertising is broken...

[Deven]

The client-server model that the "old internet" has relied on is broken. The ad-revenue cycle is destroying quality of service, shutting down many good sites permanently, and we're losing vast quantities of content in the process.

The "old Internet" was funded by government and academic institutions, and commercial activity was forbidden on the backbone. Spam was nonexistent, nobody launched DDoS attacks and few people bothered to forge email addresses, though plenty knew how. Nothing was wrong with the old Internet; it just wasn't mainstream.

The "new Internet" has many more resources online, but we suffer the excesses of commercialism at the same time. Between spam and ad-supported websites, we are bombarded by as much advertising online as in the physical world, if not moreso. And, as in the physical world, we're tired of the constant advertising, and it's losing effectiveness. It's the "new Internet" that's broken, because the advertising business isn't working too well to support most online content.

Maybe it's time we find a way to actually pay for all this content we desire? I'm not sure how best to implement it, but if you were to take the costs involved with providing the most useful services, and divide those costs among the millions upon millions of Internet users, it would probably be fairly cheap on a per-user basis. Maybe it's time for the Internet to find a better way than annoying advertising to sustain itself?

I'm beginning to wonder if marketing isn't a bit like antibiotics -- useful in moderation (to find out about products you didn't know of but would want), but dangerous to overuse (because it generates resistance which makes it become generally lrdd effective), and it doesn't matter if some marketers restrain themselves, because the abusive ones can ruin it for everyone.

I believe the marketing profession has created for itself a Tradegy of the Commons. The incessant advertising on all fronts has lessened the value of all advertising. There's just too much of it. Some marketing is useful to the consumer; if they don't know that a product is out there, they can't buy it, even if they'd like it. Most companies, however, seek to shove their products down the consumers throats with a barrage of advertising. This is counter-productive, and it explains the ever-growing hostility people are beginning to feel towards advertising in general.

I don't see any easy solutions to this, but I have an uneasy feeling that this form of advertising-driven capitalism may be due for a major reckoning, and the results could be ugly...

You get what you pay for......

[Garlok]

i think the subject says it all. We've all had a free ride for this long so why complain now? For everyone who's screaming blue murder would you like to set up a free email service? mmm the silence is deafening

Got Yahoo?!?!

[SpartaChris]

If you don't like yahoo, try softhome.net. 30MB of mail and you can use your pop service. And it is all free.

Shareware

[IHateEverybody]

This is the web equivalent of shareware. A company puts out a piece of software, you try it for free, and then after period of time, you have to pay for it or it shuts down or cripples itself or shuts off a few of its best features.

When done right, a piece of shareware can continue to be tremendously useful but will have just enough disabled features that you'll want to by it. When done wrong, you'll just get pissed off and delete it off your hard drive without a second thought. Most shareware falls somewhere in between. Most web applications will probably fall into that somewhere in between area.

I wonder if Warez d00dz will try to crack websites to get free web services the way they try to do with shareware? I'm thinking yes.

The power of the word "FREE"

[fluor2]

The power of the word "FREE" should NEVER to be utilized by means of Profit.

I see you in court, Yahoo.

Use an anonymous credit card

[Silmaril]

Pay cash for an anonymous prepaid Visa account. For example, you can buy CashX at your local 7-11 or elsewhere. Not available in your state? Get one over the web; they accept money orders.

Re:As a longtime Yahoo Mail user...

[teamhasnoi]

It's been a long time since I signed up, and I have no memory, so you are most likely right on the space. :)

Have you tried a filter that trashes everything but stuff sent to you? I found that a majority of my spam didn't even have my address on it.
Ex. 'If To or CC - does not contain - radicalaxis@yahoo.com - move to trash'.

That filter alone helped cut my spam down to almost nil. I also have taken to blocking a few addresses like lizzyNO@Spam.com that seemed to be on permanent Klez rotation. Add to that, Yahoo's "This is Spam" button has been added to the drop down box, so you don't even have to open it spam to quash it.

If something important doesn't get through, I haven't heard of it yet. ;)

NAIVE Re:Privacy Policy?

[vannevar]

Don't get me wrong. This is not impossible. It's just impractical for 99.99999% of the population. No matter how badly you and I WANT the future of bandwidth to be 100% free and 100% fiberless, that's just not going to happen.

I get 6 free MB from yahoo.

[pjp6259]

I noticed the article stated that users only get 4 free MB, but I get 6. I think this amount must have gotten grandfathered in for me, because I've been a yahoo email users for so long. I wonder what percentage of their other users are in the same situation I am?

Re:I get 6 free MB from yahoo.

[Anonymous Coward]

I am in the same situation. I read the legalese yesterday and it would appear that if you "upgrade" and then "downgrade" you will lose the 6mb and go to whatever "then-current" free size is ... probably 2mb like Hotmail. Makes it a tough choice....

Slashdot slam dunks this better than I

[FreeUser]

All you have done is taken the same servers and moved them around the country. Now you'll need to have contracts with 10 times as many service providers and oh by the way we now need a system that can synchronize dynamic content across all of them. Well done - you clearly understood the problem.

Yes, I did very clearly understand the problem.

You, obviously, do not. Nor do you understand what peer-to-peer means, beyond a catchy buzzword you associate with mp3 filetrading, nor do you appear to understand what the word "cache" means.

Ironic, that slashdot would itself point a link to a solid rebuttal to the myth that p2p and freenet can only inherently serve static content, or that even if that were true, the 99.9% of the web that is static should remain hamstrung by the needs of a few dynamic sites, and the plethora of needlessly dynamic sites written by webmasters who should have know better, but couldn't resist using sledge hammers to kill flies no matter how it bloats the traffic on the net.

p2p, be it freenet, you-serve, or some other implimentation, is the future of the web if we want scalability with shared (controlled) costs and the possibility of the internet remaining a free medium where ideas are exchanged, rather than having it devolve into a glorified home shopping network with content pushed down our throats because running a popular server is too costly for the average Joe.

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[alpg]

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