Google today announced a new mail service. This is what they claim it will do:

- Search, don’t sort: Use Google search to find the exact message you want, no matter when it was sent or received.
- Don’t throw anything away: 1000 megabytes of free storage so you’ll never need to delete another message.
- Keep it all in context. Each message is grouped with all its replies and displayed as a conversation.
- No pop-up ads. No banners. You see only relevant text ads and links to related web pages of interest.

When I read this I thought it must be an April Fools joke–it was too good to be true. If so, then Google has managed to fool the the New York Times, where John Markoff writes at length about the new offering. The service is offered only to a limited number of users right now.

If you’re looking for April foolishness from the king of search, check out this job offer.