RitwikVersionOnePointZero

This is the personal blog of Ritwik Agrawal. I was a student of mathematics at Hindu College (University of Delhi), an activist with the United Students group and a co-founder of the popular cricket games site PlanetCricket.net - the largest site of its kind in the world. I now blog at http://www.ritwikagrawal.com

RitwikVersionOnePointZero

Sunday, April 01, 2007

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 :)

1 Comments:

Blogger Aaditya said...

i always wondered if it is: dawned upon me or dawned on me?

anyways.. i havent really thought about the no religions bit.. but, now tat u pointed it out.. it very dicey, you see.. in the current scenario it would make sense to say no religion, but otherwise, as long its something personal and doesn't cause problems/rifts etc its alright..
but, then u know what Marx said...

4/08/2007 12:15 PM  

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