Googles Fool Day Announcement ... umm yet again

N. Nagaraj

The Hindu

Chennai, April 1.: Google has announced two new services: Gmail Paper for Gmail users; and, Google TiSP for internet users.

Gmail Paper was announced in the Gmail home page. It is a new facility through which one can request paper prints of specific email that one has received. Google will (snail) mail the prints to you. Just choose the messages you want printed out and click the “Paper Archive” button in the menu and allow 2-4 business days for the prints to arrive. Picture attachments are printed on photo-quality paper.

The company is forthright about the revenue model: non-intrusive targeted ads printed on the back of the sheets in red bold 36 pt Helvetica. The messages are printed on eco-friendly paper and the company encourages one to recycle. For more details, please see the Gmail Paper page (http://mail.google.com/mail/help/paper/more.html).

For technophobes who took it seriously and immediately logged in to their accounts to request copies of email (like this correspondent), it was a cruel prank to play: one is disappointed just trying to find the “Paper Archive” button.

The second announcement, made in the google home page, is for a free in-home wireless broadband service, called TiSP (Toilet internet Service Provider). The press release says: `For years, data carriers have confronted the "last hundred yards" problem for delivering data from local networks into individual homes. Now Google has successfully devised a "last hundred smelly yards" solution that takes advantage of preexisting plumbing and sewage systems and their related hydraulic data-transmission capabilities.’

Users who sign up online for the TiSP system will receive a full home self-installation kit, which includes a spindle of fiber-optic cable, a TiSP wireless router, installation CD and setup guide. Fore more details, see the TiSP overview page (http://www.google.com/tisp/)

This is not the first time that Google is making new service announcements on Fool’s Day: Last year, it was Google Romance (http://www.google.com/romance/), which encouraged you to “Pin all your romantic hopes on Google”. In 2005, it was the Google Gulp (http://www.google.com/googlegulp/) to “Quench your thirst for knowledge.”; It was also the year they announced unlimited storage in Gmail. In 2004, it was the advertising of jobs in the Google Copernicus Center (http://www.google.com/jobs/lunar_job.html) in the moon. In 2002, it revealed the secrets of its search engine (http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html) and PageRank. And in 2000, it unveiled a revolutionary MentalPlex search technology (http://www.google.com/intl/en/mentalplex/) that read the user’s mind about the search query so one wouldn’t have to type it in.