Oops! Now You Can Pull Back That Embarrassing Gmail
Have you ever hit the send button too soon? Sent a sensitive e-mail to the wrong person? Said something you wish you hadn’t in an electronic message? If so, you’ll be pleased with Google’s latest Gmail innovation: An unsend button.
Google on Thursday rolled out the new feature called Undo Send that aims to help erase embarrassing faux pas that hurried e-mail users sometimes stumble into. AOL once allowed its users to delete e-mails sent to other AOL members as long as they hadn’t been opened. But this is a different approach, allowing Gmail users to block the sending of e-mails to people who are not Gmail users.
The function builds on the Mail Goggles tool launched last October to eliminate the “morning after” regret of e-mail and the Forgotten Attachment Detector it debuted last September that offers an alert if you mention attaching a file but forgot to do so.
“Sometimes I regret sending a message the morning after. Other times I send a message and then immediately notice a mistake. I forget to attach a file or e-mail the birthday girl that I can’t make her surprise party,” said Michael Leggett, a Google user experience designer. “I can rush to close my browser or unplug the Internet — but Gmail almost always wins that race.”
The Five-Second Rule
Leggett tells the story of how an e-mail to “the wrong Larry” led him to develop Undo Send. He said he could undo just about any other action in Gmail except for unsend, so he started talking with his colleagues about the concept.
“My theory (which others shared) was that even just five seconds would be enough time to catch most of those regrettable e-mails. And now you can do just that,” Leggett said. “Turn on Undo Send in Gmail Labs under Settings, and…
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