It was one of Netflix's smartest ideas: Allowing subscribers to establish separate rental queues under a single account, perfect for keeping the peace between spouses, kids, or anyone under the same roof with clashing movie tastes. So why, oh why, is Netflix eliminating Profiles come September?

Update (7/1/08): I'm happy to report that Netflix has relented—Profiles are here to stay.

Netflix sent out a notice last night to all us of who've enabled the Profile feature, which lets you switch between multiple queues by clicking your name in the upper-right corner of the Netflix Web site.

The warning says simply that the feature is going away on September 1, and that any additional Profile queues will be deleted; if you want to keep track of all the movies in your separate (not main) queues, you'll have to print them out and re-add them manually.

Adding insult to injury, any movie ratings and Friends connections that your spouse/partner/buddies/kids made will be unceremoniously deleted as well.

And why? Here's the (non-)answer, straight from Netflix: "While it may be disappointing to see this feature go away, this change will help us to continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers."

I have to say, I'm taken aback by the change. I really can't think of a good reason to eliminate profiles—after all, you can set separate "maturity levels" if you're dealing with kids, you can separately enable or disable community features, tweak the number of movies each Profile gets ... I mean, from a subscriber standpoint, I was pretty happy.

More importantly, my wife was happy, since (thanks to her separate Profile) she could rent movies like, oh, 27 Dresses without having me shove them to the bottom of the queue.

Let's hope Netflix takes a page from Microsoft and reconsiders its decision—or, at the very least, gives us a better explanation.

Update: I just got off the phone with Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey, who says the Profiles feature was "not used by a very big portion of the member base." He added: "The people who used it loved it ... but I understand the need to continue to do what's in the best interest of all members."