I’m still not entirely convinced this isn’t a joke, but it’s not April Fools Day and it IS on the official Gmail blog, so I’m leaning toward that it’s legitimite.

Jon Perlow, a Gmail engineer, has written a feature called “Mail Goggles” which is meant to prevent regrettable drunk e-mails from being sent late on weekend nights. I’ll let him explain:

Sometimes I send messages I shouldn't send. Like the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message. Or the time I sent that late night email to my ex-girlfriend that we should get back together. Gmail can't always prevent you from sending messages you might later regret, but today we're launching a new Labs feature I wrote called Mail Goggles which may help.

When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you're really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you're in the right state of mind?

Solving math problems to send an e-mail? Google is ****ing hysterical. When active, Mail Goggles only functions late on weekend nights, but you can change it to whenever you plan on getting wasted.

I can’t find it on Gmail yet, but it was only launched yesterday night, so I’m still holding out hope that this isn’t some elaborate joke. Can anyone confirm or deny this application’s existence?

UPDATE: I found it. Go to Gmail > Settings > Labs Tab > Scroll Down. It's real alright. You can change the time it's active in your general settings. Hilarious. Now they just need to do this for texting...