Google has been accused of leaving it’s “do no evil” company motto in the dust in recent months as several of its corporate decisions had some regrettable fallout for the rest of the internet. Remember the recent YouTube court judgment fiasco and other foibles? Well, this time they really are keeping to their motto, or at east trying to help you do no evil.

The company has announced the latest development to come out of the Google Labs – Mail Goggles. Acting as a kind of breathalyzer for your email, Mail Goggles is a helper application to end all others. It actually stops you from drunk emailing and getting yourself in trouble (theoretically).

Google’s Mail Goggles is strictly opt-in, meaning you have to turn it on for it to work. This is a good thing. If you are bad at math (or if you get a lot of practice and can hold more liquor than the average person) you’ll still be able to use your email normally by keeping it turned off.

If you opt-in you will be able to set it to save you from yourself at certain hours of the night (or day, but if you are drinking all day you may need more than Mail Googles to help you), on certain days of the week. It then pops up a window with a series of math questions for you to answer. Assuming you get the answer right, the program deems you lucid enough to email.

Granted, Google’s Mail Goggles can’t tell if your competent to email sober in the first place, but at least it can theoretically save you from waking up to a keyed car sporting the word Loser on it in Sharpie with a note stapled to the driver’s seat that says “Thank for the email, jerk.” Because let’s face it, most emails sent past a certain hour on certain nights could use an intervention, right?

Related:

Entry was posted on Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 at 4:04 am under Google.

Read more entries by Leslie Poston.
Stumble It!