It will be interesting to see from where these cards are postmarked. That will provide a good clue about Google's seeming benevolence.

When I worked on medical records software, I looked into some companies that offered an API for sending snail mail. Doctor's offices spend a lot of time sending out form letters, and it seemed like it would be cool to automate sending out lab results letters. Obviously, email would be preferred (given patient consent), but physicians have to deal with the lowest common denominator (while blissfully ignoring illiteracy). Perhaps Google is experimenting with such a service? However, given all the things Google could provide to Apps users, this seems pretty low on the list.

I'd put money on this being an experiment or beta test in disguise as holiday cheer. Think GOOG411 -- a great way to collect voice samples.

Right down at the bottom of the page: "information supplied here will not be retained or used for any purposes outside of delivering your card."

But the OP is specifically talking about information specifically besides that "supplied here". Like, measuring how much it really costs, the hidden challenges, etc, in setting up a large automated mailing system.

No, the example given was voice clips. Your idea of a "trial run" is interesting, but I doubt that they're doing this to get some extra logistics practice. Unlike gmail or wave, mass mailing is a well-explored domain.

They're doing it to put the gmail logo on your fireplace mantle. Which is just fine, because you might not otherwise have sent a cheerful card. Plus their snowflake pun is hilarious.

Mass mailing might be, but highly-individualised large-batch mailing? Every card distinct? Even if this is largely a holiday gift, I'm certain they're collecting data on it. The only question is what. Maybe some of the cards will be "tracers" sent to confederates who can verify delivery times of things sent in big batches? Maybe they have multiple printing-and-distribution locations throughout the country and they're testing those? Who knows....

Or maybe they just wanted to be on social news sites again for a day.

>They're doing it to put the gmail logo on your fireplace mantle.

I'd buy the argument if I was allowed to send, say, ten of them instead of just one. One would think that, if the value of piquing the interest in GMail of my first choice recipient exceeded $0.25, then the value of sending a card to my third or forth choice would also have a positive ROI.

That's an interesting take on it, I wonder what they could possibly use a 255 character Christmas greeting for.

This is great!

I work at a startup building apps ( http://zerography.com is currently live; hopefully more soon) to get custom printed stuff into people's hands for free, and think it's really great to see Google getting involved.

There's something extra special about getting a letter or package in the mail, and with the amount of time and cost involved in mailing something to friends and family, I'm really surprised I (and almost everyone else I know, too!) don't take advantage of things like this more.

You can print these too -- even in high res:

http://mail.google.com/mail/help/holidaycard/print.html

I wonder if they manually check all the letters...would take too much work I'm thinking, so how can they check for spam or bots that auto send lots of them with spammy messages? (you could send varied spam messages as well) EDIT: didn't read the part about 1 card only

Well, gmail IS pretty good at filtering spam

A friend of mine has a hand-made e-postcard service as well, they are free but he doesnt mail them. Its pretty off the wall.

http://xn--74h.cohitre.com/

Didn't they buy Postini? I think they may be leveraging their stuff for this.

only valid inside the states :(

There are many companies in the states.... :)

Maybe you want to thank Google for offering Gmail...from Gmail...to Gmail...

My thoughts exactly... I was hoping I could be a cheapo and send a card back home to the family in Australia! :-p

Finally! A chance to drag my mom, who doesn't have a computer, into the internet age!

Since it doesn't look like it handles HTML or images, here's what I sent her:

     Happy Holidays, Mom!

           \/\/\/\/        
         /         \       
        /           \      
       /             \     
   /\_/     0    0    \_/\ 
  |                       |
   \/ \      |_|      / \/ 
       \             /     
        \  \-----/  /      
         \         /       
          \_______/        
            |   |

         Love, Eddie

Here's hoping it handles monospace...

Here's me wondering how you hacked the site to allow you to enter that many characters.

If he used tabs it wouldn't be that many.

I sent myself a love note. I can't wait to get it in the mail!

I sent a card to my kids telling them that Google has searched the global index of nice/naughty kids and they were found on the nice list.

I haven't told my wife. I want to see how much she freaks out when it comes in the mail.

Anyone know why they're doing this?

I think Google's banking on people using this tool to send postcards to their non-email friends & family. I think it creates good brand recognition for those that may not have an email address or use email rarely.

I don't think there's any other reason than old school marketing. The same way they had free Gmail stickers at some point.

Your Mom get the card, put it on the fridge and learn that her son is using Gmail. At Christmas, maybe you should ask him what it is... etc.

That plus the fact that we are now talking about it. :)

Probably to get address data (nicely linked in social relationships).

>information supplied here will not be retained or used for any purposes outside of delivering your card.

This might actually be purely benevolent, or at least not bad, just your every day cheap marketing project. Some designer's 20% time project that had no reason to not be approved.

That's what I thought too, but on the page they state:

"Cards containing inappropriate content will not be mailed, and information supplied here will not be retained or used for any purposes outside of delivering your card."

Wouldn't they disclose that? Also, if that were the aim, why limit everyone to a single card?

Do companies usually disclose that they're collecting information when they're already, well, collecting it?

But if they weren't going to use it, they would disclose that, and they do: "information supplied here will not be retained or used for any purposes outside of delivering your card"

Also known as "Add your non-Gmail using friends to our direct marketing mailing list."

and "give your friend's address to a monopoly corporate entity without their agreement". This is another scary chapter for privacy.

What does Google have a monopoly over?

The internet.

Technically that isn't true of course, realistically though, If you aren't in their search engine, you may as well not be on the internet.

How much you wanna bet all these addresses get mailed an offer for a Chrome OS-enabled netbook when it's ready?

The cards acknowledge Judaism, but not Christianity.

This isn't unheard of, but I expected more from Google.

They acknowledge a (very) secular symbol of Christmas (Rudolph) as well as a secular symbol of Hanukkah. It's just that an expectation to be inclusive with these types of things means an explicit acknowledgement of Judaism. And the design they have is pretty cool.

The Dreidel is a secular symbol that happens to be much older than Rudolph; a menorah would have been inappropriate in the same way as an image of Jesus in the manger.

I'm don't think there is a secularly celebrated version of Hannukah. If you have any references for this, please state them.

Christmas is celebrated as both a religious holiday (by large groups of people in the US and UK, which are large markets for Google) as well as a secular one.

Hanukkah is celebrated secularly by the large minority of Jews that are not religious. It's only celebrated and recognized so widely because of its close proximity to Christmas, the most important holiday in the United States, the celebration of commercialism.

Here's one thing I found with a quick search, though I suspect most secularly celebrated versions of Hanukkah are not done in such an organized fashion. http://forestparkreview.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSect...

>> "Do-it-yourself dreidel"

It seems quite odd to include this one IMHO. I had to look it up to know what it was. Is it more widely known in USA?

>It seems quite odd to include this one IMHO.

Chalk it up to American political correctness.

I'm not sure how well it is known throughout the USA. Probably >50% of people in urban areas of heard of a dreidel.

Maybe in some parts of the USA. I have a wooden dreidel on my desk. I grew up in an area with a moderately large Jewish population, and have long been interested in their culture and history.

If you're talking about the dreidel, I don't think any other major religion or culture has a christmas-specific object like the dreidel (that is, a toy that you can build yourself out of paper). It's like berating someone for planting a Christmas tree in his garden but not a turban.

Why do they need to acknowledge anything? Is this an American concept?

In the US, UK, Germany and Australia at least, it's considered polite to acknowledge other's beliefs around their religious holidays.

Super duper - let's dump a ton more paper into the mail system that people can end up either recycling or, more likely, throwing into landfill.

I'm not even an environmentalist (though an avid recycler for economic reasons) but I'm surprised the big G would come up with something as wasteful as this.