Gmail Paper

So what is Google cooking these days, specifically with regard to their pioneering email service ?

While signing into Gmail this morning, I was greeted by an announcement for "Gmail Paper". According to the blurb, "you can request a physical copy of any message with the click of a button, and we'll send it to you in the mail", for FREE, since like all other google services, this will be ad-supported. Aaah, don't we all pine for a return to the days of the paper office? Further, you don't need to be worried about environmental degradation, since Gmail Paper will utilize "96% post-consumer organic soybean sputum, and thus, actually helps the environment." (!)

Now, for some weird reason I was quite intrigued by this announcement, as if there were a real market demand for something so absurd, until it suddenly dawned upon me that today is April 1 - Fools Day, so end of joke.

Or is it? Avid netizens will remember that Google launched Gmail on April 1, 2004. At that time most people thought that the promised 1 GB of storage was a Fools Day joke, but that was not the case. Further, Google announced on April 1, 2005 that henceforth Gmail storage will constantly increase [it now stands at 2.8GB, and counting]. It is clear that Google has something for the first of April. But this time, it is safe to say that Gmail Paper is an old-fashioned April Fools joke which will not turn out to be true.

Google has gone to some length to "promote" Gmail Paper - check out the promotion page here: http://mail.google.com/mail/help/paper/more.html

The mild satire running through the above page is further proof, that this is indeed a joke.

The safest thing with Fools Day is that if somehow Gmail Paper turns out to be for real [you can NEVER tell with Google], I can claim that I was playing a fools day joke on my unsuspecting readership, by defaming a perfectly valid service as a joke :)