Google unveils "mail goggles" to curb drunk e-mailing

Oftentimes after stumbling back from a Hold Steady show (or related debauchery), liquor still swelling in our veins, we commit the faux pas of drunk dialing someone. Sure, it might feel good at the time to tell the boss what you really think about "Hawaiian Fridays," or to sob uncontrollably with your ex and plead that you just want to talk to them (honest), but odds are it's a decision you'll regret in the morning.

With the advent of cellphones, drunk dialing morphed into drunk texting, a more impersonal way of fumbling for human contact in the wee hours of your gin-soaked night. And now, in its quest for the path of least resistance, drunkenness has found a new outlet for your poorly-made decisions: e-mailing.

Always at the forefront of Internet tech, booze-related or not, Google has just released "mail goggles," a program designed to make sure you really want to send that rambling thesis on why the Jonas Brothers are the new Cheap Trick.

"Stop sending e-mail you'll later regret" says the official Gmail blog with just a hint of finger-wagging. The program amounts to a digital breathalyzer, requiring you to answer a series of math questions in an exact amount of time : "When you enable... it will check that you're really sure you want to send that late-night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you're in the right state of mind?"

The program can be adjusted to turn the goggles on at any time of the day, so those of you who like to get an early start on things (After all, it's noon somewhere!) are covered too.

The jury was out after the initial release of the program but this is no Silicon Valley prank, unlike Google's much-touted pigeon-powered page ranking technology. Will drunk e-mailing fit as neatly into our lexicon as drunk dialing and texting before it? Well, if Google went ahead and made a program about it, the odds are good. It's nice to know that if Deepak Chopra falls through, we've always got a life coach in Google.

Related links:
News: Google begins Google Chrome web browser launch
Official Google blog
InformationWeek.com: Google's YouTube - Finally, a way to make money

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