watch out, gmailers

As Slate pointed out this week, Google has a long tradition of remarkably good April Fools pranks. This year, Google has introduced Gmail Paper, a service through which Luddites can receive their emails via mail. Actually, it sounds believable enough--this is the genius of the Google April Fools prank--but it gets preposterous once you delve into the testimonials (one mother raves: "Gmail Paper is a scrapbooker's dream. I paper archive all of my son's emails, cut them out in creative shapes, and paste them in my binders") and the fine print ("Is it free? Yes. The cost of postage is offset with the help of relevant, targeted, unobtrusive advertisements, which will appear on the back of your Gmail Paper prints in red, bold, 36 pt Helvetica. No pop-ups, no flashy animations—these are physically impossible in the paper medium").

Anyway, I just wanted to make sure none of our readers fell for this one. But do feel free to click on the above link and contemplate the intelligence of the joke.