This email won’t leave your Gmail outbox unless you solve that Maths problem.
Gmail Labs provides an interesting feature to prevent you from sending mails that may you may regret later. It does so by asking you to confirm whether you really want to send that email.
Also see: All Gmail Users Have Two Email Addresses
So if you’re writing a mail late on a Friday night, when you may not be as sober as you would like yourself to be, you can get GMail to ask you a few math problems before the message leave your Gmail outbox.
You can enable this via the “Labs” tab on the Gmail “Settings” page. By default, the Mail Goggles feature of Gmail become active late night on the weekend, but you can set it to other times as well from Settings –> General.
Related: Send SMS Text Messages from Gmail
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/email/gmail-goggles-prevent-drunk-emailing-on-friday-nights/4808/
Reader Comments
One more feature introduced by GMail.
But I am not sure, whether do we really need this or not.
Let us wait and see.
Written by Vijay on 10.07.08
This feature is very cool, I didn’t know Google offers this spam feature. It means that I can leave this service on so everybody has to enter the math questions.
Cool
Written by Joel on 10.07.08
I like it :) What’s next though? A breathalizer to be able to send emails!?
Written by Peter on 10.07.08
I can’t believe someone got paid to create this widget. Complete BS. If you have something to say to someone, then man up and say it. Don’t hide behind your email.
Written by Jayman on 10.07.08
Getting drunk is COMPLETELY the best way to ‘man up’, right Jay? Psh. This was more than likely created by a google employee during their 20% time or by someone else who knows first hand about how drunk emailing can fuck ya up, so don’t be so negative.
Written by Ilsa on 10.07.08
There goes engineering R&D Dept. :)
Written by Chirax on 10.07.08
it’s just a funny joke. no reason to get all bent out of shape.
lol
Written by Amelia on 10.07.08
This is great! I could have used this back in the day!
Written by markishmark on 10.07.08
Haha, Joel doesn’t get it at all. It’s not an anti-spam feature…
Written by Matt on 10.07.08
It’s a good idea. I know a few people that would benefit from this on a Friday night.
Written by Ryan G on 10.07.08
This is a great idea. Someone should apply this to text messaging. That tends to be what gets me into hot water.
Written by Proteus on 10.07.08
I saw this either announced or unveiled on April Fools Day. I assumed it was a prank. Either the poster fell for it (and so did all us commenters), or somebody at Google saw the practicality of it and made it work, if it didn’t before. Or April is more of a blur to me than I thought.
Written by Rick Wolff on 10.07.08
This is great! Now if someone would make an app like this for my cell phone. I keep calling Paris when I get trashed.
Written by dialr on 10.07.08
I could have used this last week. Now if only someone would invent a Drunk posting blocker. I wouldn’t spend the next morning mad at myself for posting illegible nonsense.
Written by kross on 10.07.08
Proteus:
There is a similar feature in denmark for drunk-dialing. You can set it up before you go out so that you wont be able to call or sms certain numbers from your phone until the next morning. It’s proven to be very popular. :-)
Written by Joseph on 10.07.08
if only someone could come up with something similar to stop my friend sending me pictures of his willy on his phone when he gets drunk!
Written by Angi on 10.07.08
Funny… I remember the funny captcha which had integral calculus to be solved… :D
Written by Pavan Kumar on 10.07.08
Yeah matt,
After reading again I found it was not an anti-spam feature, am I bad or what? Well we all make mistakes.
Thanks for your notice!
Written by Joel on 10.07.08
Somebody needs to make something like this a requirement for posting dumb comments on news stories. I suggest a brief IQ test before a post can be made. Might have kept this post off the board…
Written by stupid on 10.07.08
Good service launched by google.
If there was same feature for msn chat. I will be more happy but to implement that it might be very hard.
Written by Freebies on 10.07.08
Google adds a test to make sure you aren t too drunk to send this email to avoid regretting it in the morning hehe
Written by website designs on 10.07.08
Great, another way for people to get drunk and not have to worry about being held accountable for their decisions!
Written by bgates87 on 10.07.08
It’s definitely real, its as easy as following the instructions in the post to test it.
Written by Mickey on 10.07.08
Interesstingly – The draft to illustrate is saved at 10:32 AM.
Written by Shanker Bakshi on 10.07.08
hmmmm…I would get out a calculator though. Plus Would it stop me mailing on my gmail on my iphoen when activated through pop3?
Written by Tony on 10.16.08
i can do math in my dreams. goggles didn’t stop me. I hope she didn’t mind…
Written by AngelDarling on 10.25.08
My ex ex boyfriend now my friend once wrote me a very drunken budbling email but at that time i din`t know until he apologize because of this, …now he`s still writting short msgs ..really confuse me …the funny thing this only happen when he`s drunk , haha.. He needs this very urgent!!!!!
Written by peige on 10.27.08
I am too drunk right now, but I’ll post this comment even if I may regret it later.
Written by Fay Guck on 11.05.08
Aside from the subject and “gonna,” the grammar on that email looks way too good for a drunk person. =P
Written by Charles on 12.17.08
Hello there,
I came to know that google’s gonna introduce one feature where if you accidentaly sedn one wrong email to certain email address, you can cancel it before the receiver checks it, just like the feature is there in Microsoft Outlook….Could you please tell me if this feature is already avaiable with google now or they are gonna introduce it later??If its available, how to set up my email-settings according to that?? Pls help me out..thank you !!
Written by Bhrigu on 05.11.09