Is Yahoo Trying to Implement a Fee for Groups?

[frazzledspice]

For some reason it's conducting a survey about that very possibility.

http://promo2.yahoo.com/sbin/Groups/survey.cgi

I belong to two Yahoo groups that are of some value to me--a piano teachers' group and a church band message board.

Personally, if fighting off pop-up boxes is the price I have to pay for free services, it's the price I have to pay. I've gotten pretty handy at zapping those pesky little annoyances.

I do pay for one Yahoo service currently--Bill Pay. It costs me about $2 a month more than the bank's online bill payment service, but payments are deducted from my account on the day I want, not a week or more in advance. In addition, when the bank online payment system sent out paper checks, they charged me the day they were mailed. Twice the checks never cleared, and it took them a MONTH to correct their error.

No, I don't want more e-mail storage. I don't want to pay for groups.

I want Yahoo to tighten its belts the way the rest of us have in this recessionary economy.

[amykhar]

They might just decide to tighten their belts. Many message forum sites have decided that since users aren't willing to pay for the service by responding to ads or paying a fee, they will simply discontinue the service.

Amy

[mrisch[$]]

Originally posted by frazzledspice
I want Yahoo to tighten its belts the way the rest of us have in this recessionary economy.

I don't know the answer to your question. What I do know is that companies won't pay for ads that users are deft at dismissing. There's no business in it.

It takes an immense amount of programming, server, and bandwidth costs to provide the groups that we want for free. And there is no such thing as a free lunch anymore. If yahoo tightened its belts on non-revenue producing ventures, it would mean a shutdown of the service, and none of us wants that.

[erik_kosberg]

If the market will bear it, why shouldn’t they try to make a buck off of it? Yes, it’s a cliché, but there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Somebody, somewhere, somehow, is paying the bill.

[erik_kosberg]

Gotta love the simultaneous postings about free lunches....