Google wastes our time with quasi-hoax "Mail Goggles"

October 9, 2008 / Filed under: Google, Gmail, Features

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.

Comments/Mentions

# Me. at 10/9/2008 1:22 pm cst

Umm, I send drunk emails. I've done it quite a few times. I've even drunkenly emailed an ex, though, not to get back together. And yeah, I do get drunk at random times throughout the day and not just at night, but I think this may have been able to save me at least once in my drunken endeavors. And why is it wasting your time?? If you don't want it, turn it off. Geez. I like their sense of humor when creating new apps. So what if it's only useful to some.

# Andy Atkinson at 10/9/2008 5:08 pm cst

Matt, not everyone has declared that "email is for dinosaurs" [1] and there are some people that still use it. :) However I do agree with you that maybe a single service that catches any outbound messages from me at that time (twitter, SMS) would be even more useful (though not really practical to build). Now if your iPhone could read your blood alcohol content from your hand when you're holding it, you could set it to auto-active this service. Or consider this alternative perspective: people that get in trouble for sending messages like this are supposed to get in trouble, they need to learn from negative feedback.

[1] http://matthom.com/archive/2007/06/21/email-is-for-dinosaurs-or-soon-will-be [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodalcoholcontent