Google is like that one friend you have; the one that has to be better than everyone else, has to get all up in your privacy and then store all your information in its huge database for the rest of eternity and has to show off all the time with new tricks.
Now introducing Google’s newest show-off feature: Mail Goggles.
With Mail Goggles, Google tries to hold a dearer place in your heart. From friend who is superior to you in every way and constantly reminds you of its stock price, to friend who holds your hair back when you’re throwing up and makes sure you don’t call your ex.
Creator and Google engineer, Jon Perlow, said his own weakness inspired the program, “Sometimes I send messages I shouldn't send. Like the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message. Or the time I sent that late night e-mail to my ex-girlfriend that said we should get back together.”
Mail Goggles is activated by default from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. on weekends. With the application turned on, sending e-mails during this peak time of inebriation gets decidedly more difficult. Before the message is sent, a notice pops up demanding you answer five math problems in sixty seconds before you put your tipsy self out there on an emotional ledge.
Problem difficulty settings can be switched so Google can be a good pal even to those who are good at math. But I think there’s something amiss here. Either Google doesn’t think math geniuses have much to worry about in the making-a-fool-of-themselves department (I’m sure even Einstein had his days) or it’s a total conspiracy designed to change the reputation of those who are good at math and science, otherwise popularly known by common folk as “nerds.”
Just imagine a world where Mail Goggles works. It might take a stretch of your imagination, but we could get to the point where all mushy, humiliating e-mails are stopped in their tracks by the power of people not being able to add and subtract (or find a calculator) under the influence. All people, except for — you guessed it — the geniuses, whose confessions and rants already prompt sober replies of “what the hell is wrong with you?”
I never even knew drunk e-mailing was such a problem. I’ve had to hide friends’ cell phones in potted plants to be sure but wrangling laptops out of people’s hands just doesn’t happen.
What’s more; even if drunk 3 a.m. e-mails are indeed a big enough societal problem to cause the creation of this application, Mail Goggles isn’t going to solve it.
Well, the application wouldn’t stop me at least — I’ve seen too many multiplication table flash cards in my lifetime for my blood alcohol content to prevent me from getting something off my chest.
Who’s the smart one now, Google?
Melissa Silva hasn’t gotten a drunk e-mail — yet. Be the first and send her one at melissa.silva@asu.edu.
