Goodmail Systems will shut down this month, according to Direct Marketing News, who reports that CEO Daniel Dreymann says the main reason is an acquisition attempt by an undisclosed Fortune 500 company was taken off the table. 

"We were on track to be acquired," Dreymann told the publication. "We got a terms sheet, and they left us at the altar at the last minute."

Goodmail is a company that offers a service called CertifiedEmail whose goal is to eliminate security risks in email, and it is one that many organizations turn to when they have important emails to send. Goodmail’s customers include a number of big name retailers from Walmart to Old Navy, not to mention ISPs like AOL, AT&T and Comcast, and government agencies like the FBI and the FDA.

Two year’s ago there was a bit of a media frenzy surrounding Goodmail’s apparent arrangement with AOL; if you don’t recall the exact players you might remember national news coverage of the "email postage" scare in spring 2006. Well, Goodmail’s back with a new CEO and a new plan: certifying video email.

Goodmail Systems announced last week that four major Internet service providers will be adding CertifiedEmail to their repertoire of email filters. The sweeping partnerships give Goodmail automatic access to some 65 percent of US inboxes.

If a fish salesman’s brother tells you his brother’s fish is the best in town, do you take his word for it? Or would you think it, um, fishy? So when AOL’s brother releases a report that use of Goodmail’s Certified Email resulted in a 30% increase in response, shouldn’t we subject it to the same scrutiny?

Leaving AOL further out on a limb holding its Goodmail playbook, Google said it will not be instituting a payment system to ensure email delivery to Gmail users. The power of email filtering, said the company, should rest in the hands of its users.

The high drama surrounding AOL’s arrangement with Goodmail’s CertifiedEmail service was further escalated Thursday after MoveOn.org, one of the company’s most brutal critics, announced that AOL had blocked emails containing links to MoveOn’s petition site, DearAOL.com.

Goodmail CEO Richard Gingras appears to have employed the Jedi Mind Trick to convince the California Senate that AOL’s Goodmail arrangement was never about fighting spam and phishing. One imagines a room reduced to murmurs and page flipping as reporters dig through their notes from February.

Dean Florez, a state senator in California, will hold a hearing on April 3rd about AOL’s proposed implementation of a two-tiered email system.

Plans by AOL and Yahoo to embrace and implement Goodmail’s “Certified Email” solution, even with allowances for non-profit groups, has drawn criticism from a broad swath of the Internet-using public; we’re going to discuss why this is a good first start if only it extended farther to metering for all email.

AOL will be implementing the Goodmail certified emailer system at the end of the month. This will create a new email tier guaranteeing that customers of Goodmail get their email delivered into the top of the inbox.

The plans by Yahoo and AOL to utilize the services of email certification firm Goodmail have brought together two bitter political rivals to denounce the service.

We may never know what happened before AOL ran to the microphone to announce their Enhanced Whitelist’s resuscitation. But both Goodmail and AOL deny there was any intent to corner the bulk email market, leaving the world outside AOL conference rooms to wonder.

Let’s start by putting out a fire. America Online is not, repeat, is not phasing out its Enhanced Whitelist email system and rewarding that elite group of good emailers by extorting a fraction of a cent per hyperlink and image laden emails through Goodmail as a new type of email postage charge.

What has become clear over the last few days is that Goodmail is not designed to combat spam. It’s sole purpose is to generate revenue for itself and partner ISP’s.

Goodmail Systems announced that AOL and Yahoo are going to implement their pay-to-play email authentication system.

According to DM News AOL has reversed its decision to eliminate its enhanced whitelist but still plans to use the Goodmail service.

America Online is phasing out its Enhanced Whitelist, replacing the bulk-mailing program with Goodmail’s CertifiedEmail program. The new system will carry a fraction of cent fee to commercial mailers for every email with images and hyperlinks.