How Google could kill spam

How Google could kill spam: "Google struck a nerve with its announcement of a free e-mail service that could make it unnecessary to ever delete a message. GMail.com rocketed from nowhere to rank 495th among Websites visited by U.S. Internet users the day the service was announced, according to Hitwise, a monitoring service that analyzes the Web activity of 25 million users.

GMail has also caught the fancy of Seth Godin, a best selling author on Internet marketing and self-described agent of change. In his blog, Godin wrote GMail is a threat to Yahoo (YHOO: news, chart, profile) and other sites because, 'a huge percentage of the portals' traffic comes from e-mail.' Google has an opportunity to become the gold standard for spam-free e-mail, he said. What if Google decided to charge $1 a year for its service and required users to post a valid credit card, he asked. And, what if a violation of Google's (assumed) anti-spam rules would cost $20 each time? Suddenly, Google would be it. "People would happily let it through spam filters. You could trust it. People would become suspicious of anyone who used any other e-mail," Godin said