Google's Mail Goggle service has provoked an orgy of comments since it debuted Monday, most focused on how it can prevent weekend lushes from sending e-mail they might regret after their hangovers wear off.
"If I want to send a drunken e-mail, and all that's standing between me and success are a few math problems, I'm gonna go find that calculator," huffed TechCrunch's Michael Arrington.
The new opt-in service sticks five rudimentary math problems at the bottom of every e-mail you try to send on a Friday and Saturday night. You get 60 seconds to punch in the right answers. Mess up--or just run out of time--and your e-mail will ferment in your mailbox, awaiting you in a more lucid moment.
"Mail you send late night on the weekends may be useful but you may regret it the next morning," Mail Goggles creator Jon Perlow declared in a description he wrote of the service on the company's labs page. "Solve some simple math problems and you're good to go. Otherwise, get a good night's sleep and try again in the morning."
While Mail Goggles might be a sop for weekend lushes who like math, it's also part of a much bigger plan to improve Gmail. Mail Goggles is one of two dozen features to spring from Gmail Labs, a test bed for new applications that launched in June. Other features include the "Forgotten Attachment Detector," which prevents users from sending messages without the necessary attached documents, and "Pictures In Chat," which shows pictures of your friends as you chat with them in Gmail.
"Labs is playful, fun and experimental but it also has a lot of utility," says Google spokesman Leon Kotlyar.
Indeed, users are encouraged to provide feedback on the features so that Google can make them better or ditch them. All these features are still in testing.
Kotlyar says the features are mostly off-the-cuff ideas from Gmail engineers that take just a few hours to develop.
Here's our idea: Why not put math puzzles in the e-mail of every kid in grade school? With all that math practice, Google could probably single-handedly raise the SAT scores of all high school students.
One other observation, dear Google: Make your problems a wee bit tougher. Our colleague Dave Ewalt, who has seldom boasted about his mathematical prowess, tried out the program the other night after a very long evening. There are folks in Nigeria who will attest to the fact that it didn't slow him down one bit.
Now, if only someone at Google could figure out how to push up the company's stock price. Shares of the Mountain View, Calif.-based Internet giant have been dragged down since the financial crisis worsened in September. The stock is off 50% over the past year.
