Gmail Custom Time…April Fools!
Filed under: miscellaneous, technology
Is Google creating a time machine? I logged into Gmail this evening (let’s be honest, it’s now morning) to do a little work and was greeted by a new link which is not live. Well, it’s visible but it doesn’t navigate anywhere but a 404, page not found. Great, no offense Google but it kind of kills the joke when it’s a dud after I find it.
Some of you may remember last year’s Gmail April Fools joke - Gmail Paper. Basically, they offered a free service for you to print all your email and they would send it to you on paper. Where do they come up with this stuff?!?
So how will Gmail Custom Time play out? I’m guessing a ’service’ to let you set times emails will be sent (I can actually see a use for this) or when an email should have been sent.
Here’s a shot from my Gmail account.
UPDATE: The link in Gmail is now live and it’s pointing to a page with a similar format to last year’s April Fools. The joke this year is a feature that allows you to set the time emails are ’sent’ as I predicted above. Now I can tell my boss that I sent him that email hours ago even though I didn’t. “Hey boss, refresh your inbox, I know I sent you that TPS report.” Obviously this wouldn’t really work (it’s like printing “hundred of thousands” of emails and having them delivered)…let’s hope they have something else for us when I wake up.
Posted on April 1st, 2008 by Nathan
3 Comments
April 1st, 2008 at 12:48 am
I love it man. Then Gmail peeps have really got a sense of humor.
April 1st, 2008 at 12:51 pm
they really had me going on this one. i missed last year’s Paper gag, so it never occurred to me that Custom Time might be a joke. i found this article in the process of looking for help, because the “Set Custom Time” link wasn’t showing up in my Compose view.
April 1st, 2008 at 12:58 pm
@Josh - I was discussing with co-workers today how Google actually tries to have fun with things. A school of thought my current project doesn’t subscribe to.
@Jeff - You’re not alone. There are a lot of people that missed last year’s Gmail Paper prank and are pretty confused by the custom time.