WTF? Google Felony Service

Michael Froomkin reviews Gmail’s new “custom time” feature, including this zinger (from Google):

Pre-date your messages
You tell us what time you would have wanted your email sent, and we’ll take care of the rest. Need an email to arrive 6 hours ago? No problem.

Uh, last time I looked, that kind of thing was grounds for disbarment in California.

Google adds:

Make them count
Use your custom time stamped messages wisely — each Gmail user gets ten per year.

Ooh, that will help at sentencing time…

PS: Check calendar. Tee hee.

I've Been Trying to Tell You...

Do a Google search for "all men are bastards."

(Thanks anon).

Scary Koran Quotes

Google now offers a home-page widget called "Scary Koran Quotes." It comes with a disclaimer saying it is not home-grown Google content, but it is up and available at Google's new-stuff page. It comes from these guys. You can post it right next to the Chuck Norris Fact Generator.

Swim!

Turcopolier joins the list of those who is amused by Google’s instructions on going from New York to London (swim!), The bit has been floating around for at least the last few days now, but nobody to my knowledge has answered the three basic questions:

1. Why is it there? Is this the work of a mischief-making infant that somehow slipped under the radar? Or do we have a company policy of harmless merriment?

2. Why do they keep sending us to France?

3. Why can't they find Istanbul?
   

Microsoft Deathwatch (Updated)

Paul Graham (who?) says that Microsoft is dead. He doesn't really mean it: he explains that by "dead" he means "increasingly irrelevant," which is to say--well, not dead.

But Graham's piece is still interesting, even to non-geeks as an exercise in business strategizing. Takeaway shot: "Yahoo [was] warped from the start by their fear of Microsoft. That was why they'd positioned themselves as a 'media company' instead of a technology company."

Reminds me of the yarn about how Western Union turned down the rights to the telephone because they didn't realize their business was communications. And Peter Drucker saying that the toughest part of business is figuring out what business you are in. Or something like that. H/T Kottke.

PS: Who is undead? Hint, begins with "G."

This Just In: The director of business development at Microsoft does not agree.