I was reading in the Webpronews newsletter more about AOL and Yahoo getting ready to use Goodmail. What can I say except they’re annoying quite a range of people. You know a company is doing something unpopular when political groups as different as RightMarch and MoveOn are both opposed to the idea.

Of course, this kind of idea will never be popular with businesses and that’s quite reasonable. And it’s also quite reasonable for individuals to be opposed. It’s none of AOL’s or Yahoo’s business to decide who you, as an individual, want to allow to email you. That’s why whitelisting is reasonable - it allows the individual to say that such and such a business is allowed to contact them.

Now, I’ll admit AOL users are sometimes a problem for businesses in any case. All too many of them are a little free about using the “Spam” button to unsubscribe from newsletters they have merely become bored with, but had chosen to subscribe to previously. Not all of them do that, but anyone who runs a newsletter knows it happens. But Goodmail is certainly not the solution.

I really hope that AOL and Yahoo find that the backlash on this is not worth the extra income, or this could easily become a new business trend. I understand businesses looking for new income sources, but they need to limit themselves to that which is theirs to control.