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Happy holidays from Gmail: Free snailmail gift cards
- hubb 17y agoonly valid inside the states :(
- mrtron 17y agoThere are many companies in the states.... :) Maybe you want to thank Google for offering Gmail...from Gmail...to Gmail...
- aarongough 17y agoMy thoughts exactly... I was hoping I could be a cheapo and send a card back home to the family in Australia! :-p
- nym 17y agoI sent myself a love note. I can't wait to get it in the mail!
- bockris 17y agoI sent a card to my kids telling them that Google has searched the global index of nice/naughty kids and they were found on the nice list. I haven't told my wife. I want to see how much she freaks out when it comes in the mail.
- joblessjunkie 17y agoAlso known as "Add your non-Gmail using friends to our direct marketing mailing list."
- aw3c2 17y agoand "give your friend's address to a monopoly corporate entity without their agreement". This is another scary chapter for privacy.
- icey 17y agoWhat does Google have a monopoly over?
- run4yourlives 17y agoThe internet. Technically that isn't true of course, realistically though, If you aren't in their search engine, you may as well not be on the internet.
- genieyclo 17y agoI wonder if they manually check all the letters...would take too much work I'm thinking, so how can they check for spam or bots that auto send lots of them with spammy messages? (you could send varied spam messages as well) EDIT: didn't read the part about 1 card only
- bbq 17y agoWell, gmail IS pretty good at filtering spam
- jack7890 17y agoAnyone know why they're doing this?
- aw3c2 17y agoProbably to get address data (nicely linked in social relationships).
- jack7890 17y agoWouldn't they disclose that? Also, if that were the aim, why limit everyone to a single card?
- Frazzydee 17y agoDo companies usually disclose that they're collecting information when they're already, well, collecting it? But if they weren't going to use it, they would disclose that, and they do: "information supplied here will not be retained or used for any purposes outside of delivering your card"
- rms 17y ago>information supplied here will not be retained or used for any purposes outside of delivering your card. This might actually be purely benevolent, or at least not bad, just your every day cheap marketing project. Some designer's 20% time project that had no reason to not be approved.
- daydream 17y agoThat's what I thought too, but on the page they state: "Cards containing inappropriate content will not be mailed, and information supplied here will not be retained or used for any purposes outside of delivering your card."
- christonog 17y agoI think Google's banking on people using this tool to send postcards to their non-email friends & family. I think it creates good brand recognition for those that may not have an email address or use email rarely.
- Tawheed 17y agoDidn't they buy Postini? I think they may be leveraging their stuff for this.
- edw519 17y agoFinally! A chance to drag my mom, who doesn't have a computer, into the internet age! Since it doesn't look like it handles HTML or images, here's what I sent her: Happy Holidays, Mom! \/\/\/\/ / \ / \ / \ /\_/ 0 0 \_/\ | | \/ \ |_| / \/ \ / \ \-----/ / \ / \_______/ | | Love, Eddie
- rms 17y agoHere's hoping it handles monospace...
- AdamGibbins 17y agoHere's me wondering how you hacked the site to allow you to enter that many characters.
- ars 17y agoIf he used tabs it wouldn't be that many.
- nailer 17y agoThe cards acknowledge Judaism, but not Christianity. This isn't unheard of, but I expected more from Google.
- rms 17y agoThey acknowledge a (very) secular symbol of Christmas (Rudolph) as well as a secular symbol of Hanukkah. It's just that an expectation to be inclusive with these types of things means an explicit acknowledgement of Judaism. And the design they have is pretty cool. The Dreidel is a secular symbol that happens to be much older than Rudolph; a menorah would have been inappropriate in the same way as an image of Jesus in the manger.
- bumblebird 17y ago>> "Do-it-yourself dreidel" It seems quite odd to include this one IMHO. I had to look it up to know what it was. Is it more widely known in USA?
- rms 17y ago>It seems quite odd to include this one IMHO. Chalk it up to American political correctness. I'm not sure how well it is known throughout the USA. Probably >50% of people in urban areas of heard of a dreidel.
- tjr 17y agoMaybe in some parts of the USA. I have a wooden dreidel on my desk. I grew up in an area with a moderately large Jewish population, and have long been interested in their culture and history.
- nailer 17y agoI'm don't think there is a secularly celebrated version of Hannukah. If you have any references for this, please state them. Christmas is celebrated as both a religious holiday (by large groups of people in the US and UK, which are large markets for Google) as well as a secular one.
- mcav 17y agoYou can print these too -- even in high res: http://mail.google.com/mail/help/holidaycard/print.html http://mail.google.com/mail/help/holidaycard/print.html
- ShabbyDoo 17y agoIt will be interesting to see from where these cards are postmarked. That will provide a good clue about Google's seeming benevolence. When I worked on medical records software, I looked into some companies that offered an API for sending snail mail. Doctor's offices spend a lot of time sending out form letters, and it seemed like it would be cool to automate sending out lab results letters. Obviously, email would be preferred (given patient consent), but physicians have to deal with the lowest common denominator (while blissfully ignoring illiteracy). Perhaps Google is experimenting with such a service? However, given all the things Google could provide to Apps users, this seems pretty low on the list. I'd put money on this being an experiment or beta test in disguise as holiday cheer. Think GOOG411 -- a great way to collect voice samples.
- davis 17y agoThat's an interesting take on it, I wonder what they could possibly use a 255 character Christmas greeting for.
- simonista 17y agoRight down at the bottom of the page: "information supplied here will not be retained or used for any purposes outside of delivering your card."
- arantius 17y agoBut the OP is specifically talking about information specifically besides that "supplied here". Like, measuring how much it really costs, the hidden challenges, etc, in setting up a large automated mailing system.
- mkyc 17y agoNo, the example given was voice clips. Your idea of a "trial run" is interesting, but I doubt that they're doing this to get some extra logistics practice. Unlike gmail or wave, mass mailing is a well-explored domain. They're doing it to put the gmail logo on your fireplace mantle. Which is just fine, because you might not otherwise have sent a cheerful card. Plus their snowflake pun is hilarious.
- joezydeco 17y agoHow much you wanna bet all these addresses get mailed an offer for a Chrome OS-enabled netbook when it's ready?
- bryanwoods 17y agoThis is great! I work at a startup building apps ( http://zerography.com http://zerography.com is currently live; hopefully more soon) to get custom printed stuff into people's hands for free, and think it's really great to see Google getting involved. There's something extra special about getting a letter or package in the mail, and with the amount of time and cost involved in mailing something to friends and family, I'm really surprised I (and almost everyone else I know, too!) don't take advantage of things like this more.
- bshep 17y agoA friend of mine has a hand-made e-postcard service as well, they are free but he doesnt mail them. Its pretty off the wall. http://xn--74h.cohitre.com/ http://xn--74h.cohitre.com/
- petercooper 17y agoSuper duper - let's dump a ton more paper into the mail system that people can end up either recycling or, more likely, throwing into landfill. I'm not even an environmentalist (though an avid recycler for economic reasons) but I'm surprised the big G would come up with something as wasteful as this.