“Beer goggles” can make you do things you may later deeply regret but Gmail hopes its new “Mail Goggles” will ensure that sending embarassing emails isn’t one of them.
The feature, rolled out this week by Google, requires users to solve a few timed math problems after they click the “send” button, to verify they are “in the right state of mind” to send that late-night missive.
In its default setting, Mail Goggles is active only late on weekend nights “as that is the time you’re most likely to need it,” but can be activated at other times as well, Gmail engineer Jon Perlow said in a posting on the Official Gmail Blog.
Perlow said he designed Mail Goggles to spare others the pain inflicted by messages that should never have seen the sober light of day — that desperate love letter to your ex, or the brilliant riposte telling the whole office what you really think of your boss.
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7 comments so far
I like the idea, but when im drunk i really don’t go on my computer! And my girlfriend recently got caught out by this, silly, if only they had the anti drunk CAPTCHA system out then!
Excellent google!
- Posted by Phil SeoI think this stinks! Let us make our own mistakes - thet’s the only way we learn.
This is interfering with our right a free speech. It is unConstitutional. I am no longer going to use google.
- Posted by Virginia PiccininniI’d tell Google to get lost but I wouldn’t wish them all that good luck. Talk about 1984? and Brave New World?
- Posted by Virginia Kind@the two people above me yelling at Google for this: It’s an optional feature. You don’t need it. Good job.
- Posted by Bob Bobberson“This is interfering with our right a free speech. It is unConstitutional. I am no longer going to use google.”
You’re an idiot. Please proceed to the nearest cliff and jump off of it.
- Posted by AnthonyForget what Google is “imposing”–this looks like something that is used per the user’s desires. My observation is that if people are mindless enough to send out of control e-mails when they are overtired, drunk or angry, maybe the consequences will be a source of education to them. Just another market identified: those who want someone else to control them because they are too lazy to control themselves.
- Posted by AnnMy problem is I write the crazy stuff when I’m pre-menstrual, not drunk. Do you have something to filter hormonally charged chicks?
- Posted by Michelle