Yahoo! to charge for email service
Published: 21 Mar 2002 16:25 GMT
In Yahoo!'s latest effort to introduce fees around its popular site, the Web portal will begin charging for a service that lets people check their Yahoo! email messages from outside services.
The service, called POP3 or Mail Forwarding, automatically forwards emails received in a person's Yahoo! account to any outside email service, such as Microsoft Outlook or Eudora.
Beginning 24 April, Mail Forwarding will cost $29.99 a year, according to a message posted on Yahoo!'s site. However, people who subscribe before 24 April can pay $19.99 a year.
Mail Forwarding allows people to use outside email services to access Yahoo! Mail, automatically forward mail to another email account and send attachments of up to 5MB instead of the current 1.5MB limit. Also, paying subscribers will not have a Yahoo! text advertisement attached at the bottom of their outgoing messages.
A Yahoo! representative was not immediately available for comment. But the posting on Yahoo!'s site said the decision to charge a fee was meant to improve the service.
"A service fee allows us to improve service quality and reduce spam," the message read.
During the past year, Yahoo! has been experimenting with ways to implement fees for certain areas on its site. Last weekend, the company began surveying site visitors to gauge whether people would pay for select audio and video programming through the site.
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