Yahoo! Enabling Goodmail Certification on All Messages

Yahoo! may be moving toward shutting images off by default in all its inboxes.

The company made Goodmail’s CertifiedEmail program available on all inbound messages to its Yahoo! Mail beta program. It also plans to implement Goodmail’s program on its Yahoo! Classic accounts later this year, according to a spokeswoman.

Previously, the program—where senders who meet certain criteria can pay to have their messages guaranteed delivered into the inbox with graphics and links intact, and a seal of authenticity—was to be used on Yahoo! for transactional messages only.

While this expansion of the CertifiedEmail program won’t have a whole lot of immediate impact on e-mail senders yet, sources indicate that could change soon.

Currently, images are on by default in the classic Yahoo! e-mail service, the one to which the vast majority of Yahoo! Web mail users still subscribe.

Moreover, Yahoo! spokeswoman Karen Mahon said the company will not migrate classic Yahoo! Mail users to the new beta program. As a result, CertifiedEmail’s image benefit is currently irrelevant for most Yahoo! inboxes.

“While the new Yahoo! Mail will become the default experience for most new registrations, we will continue to offer email users choice between the classic Yahoo! Mail and the new Yahoo! Mail,” she wrote in an e-mail exchange with this newsletter. “With that said, we plan to implement a CertifiedEmail program in the classic Yahoo! Mail experience later this year.”

But with images on by default in the classic Yahoo! Mail program, CertifiedEmail’s image benefit still is mostly irrelevant.

However, one source close to the situation who asked not to be identified said they believe Yahoo! will shut images off in its classic program later this year, as well.

This would mean the only sure way to get images into any of Yahoo!’s inboxes soon will be to use CertifiedEmail.

Yahoo!’s Mahon was not immediately reachable for comment on the image issue.