Google wastes our time with quasi-hoax "Mail Goggles" Oct09 '08

Is this a joke? It's not April 1, so I'm a little confused.

When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you're really sure you want to send that late night Friday email.

This is actually being rolled out as an official "labs" feature. When I first saw the post, I assumed it was just another Google hoax. No, this is for real. This is what the Gmail team has been up to.

First of all, I'm all for providing a little humor in applications. This is why I love Gmail and other Google products.

But who the heck would use this? If it's voluntary to turn on, users could just turn it off before sending a drunk email. It's not going to work unless it's a permanent fixture - a feature that can't be disabled by individual users.

And who's to say when I get drunk? Sometimes I go to baseball games and I'm drunk by 2 PM. Knowing this, I'd have to have my "mail goggles" turned on almost around the clock.

Also, it only works on the Gmail web interface, and not external mail clients that pull down Gmail, such as my iPhone's mail client.

Finally, who writes emails when they're drunk!?

What I really need "goggles" for is SMS, Twitter, and phone calls (including Utterli, etc). Email is the last thing I'll do when I'm drunk.

So, I appreciate the humor, Gmail team - but please stick to making legitimate features that make people more productive with their email.

Categories: Features , Gmail , Google

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