Just yesterday Google added functionality to GMail labs to let you view YouTube videos, Flickr images and a whole lot more from within your email messages. Now, another new feature and this is genuinely one of a kind – Undo Send.
Undo Send essentially does just that, lets you undo an email you have just sent.
By enabling Undo Send in GMail Labs in Settings, you’ll see an “undo” option available above every message you send. Clicking on the “undo” option will of course ensure the intended recipient never receives the email and might just save your life.
How does it work?
Well the “Undo” option only appears for five seconds – just enough time to retract all those awful things you just said. :) Clever Google, clever.
Actually, it looks like they’re rolling it out in typical Google fashion, without explanation or coordination. Not all users have it. The feature will show up when it does. It’s one of those when Google gets a “round tuit” features that Google is notorious for.
of course it’s only for 5 seconds – otherwise that would mean Gmail would have to create a way to reach into your recipients’ email in-boxes and *that* would be a hell of a thing to try to a) program, much less b) explain to yahoo, private companies’ email servers, etc.
i.e. it’s barely an “undo” it’s just a “pause for a sec to decide if you really meant to hit send” and then you’re still stuck with the “regretful emails sent.” good headline of wishful/magical thinking though.
It’s not even an “undo send”. All it does is hold off on sending your message for five seconds. The “your message has been sent” notice is lying, it should say “your message is about to be sent in 5 seconds”. It would be impossible to actually undo an e-mail that was already sent.
Really? You’ve definitely checked ‘Labs” – it’s not there?
They could easily implement it for Gmail to Gmail emails only. If the recipient of the offending message hasn’t logged in yet they could let you erase it. Would be a good reason for people to switch to Gmail.
Come to think of it, you could even edit it AFTER people got it and it would show an ‘updated’ icon in the persons inbox. Gmail Email would start working like Google Docs
interesting thought – to have gmail-to-gmail “undo” options – but to follow your analogy of Google Docs, it would only work for those who’ve agreed to enable that option to/with you.
but really therea re too many systems & options out there. businesses with their own email systems aren’t going to switch to Gmail, and there are a lot of people who insist that they’ll never use Gmail because of the ad functions (I have gmail, don’t worry, I’m not an outsider slamming things).
so maybe Gmail has made an app that works for a handful of peeps. that’s cool, but is it really that useful?
I specifically wanted to comment here yesterday because people were responding as if they’d just read the headline – not the reality of the teensy window of time this offers.