AOL, Yahoo to charge e-mail postage

America Online (AOL) will begin charging businesses to send commercial e-mail to its users in the first wide-scale use of authenticated e-mail to reduce spam, reports USA Today.

The certified e-mail system would require advertisers to pay a fee per 1 000 messages. The plan is optional, though AOL and its tech partner, Goodmail Systems, cannot guarantee that all non-certified e-mail with Web links and images will be delivered.

If successful, the plan could entice other Internet service providers to follow. Yahoo plans to test Goodmail`s system to certify e-mail for transactions such as financial statements and shipping confirmations.

Google, Internet voice-call company Skype and venture capitalists have invested in a new user-run network of WiFi hotspots, which they hope will become the biggest in the world by the end of the year, reports MSNBC.

Google, Skype, Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital announced $21.7 million in first-round funding for Madrid-based Fon to build on its growing global band of "foneros" today. Foneros are users of the service and are known as "Bill", "Linus" or "Alien".

The service went live in November and has registered 3 000 users in 53 countries in two months.

Luxury car-maker BMW has had its German Web site blacklisted by Google after it was caught trying to artificially boost its popularity ranking on the world`s leading Internet search engine, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.

The sanction - known colloquially as the "Google death penalty" - means a Google search for terms like "BMW" or "BMW Germany" will not return a direct link to the car company`s German Web site, bmw.com.de.

BMW is accused of search engine optimisation, setting up so-called doorway pages that trick search bots like Google`s into boosting the page rank of a site or a page and directing searchers there.