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"