Late last night it began to percolate through the tech blogosphere with TechCrunch and their front row seat blogging about it. Slowly the blog posts and Twitter messages began to filter through the FriendFeed grapevine.

Yes folks Google had everyone on the edge of their seats waiting breathlessly for the anticipated pimping of their Gmail Labs. Finally the curtain was going to be raised on the place where their developers can show off their 20% time projects for Gmail. Speculation had been fermenting since Google first announced that there was even going to be such a thing as the Lab. Now we were going to finally see all the cool stuff that would be taking our Gmail to the next level.

The curtain drops.

Gmail Labs is displayed to the world.

Uhm……

This is it?

Wow …

Are you sure you aren’t hiding anything?

So let me get this straight. This is what you are offering up for serious consideration as improvements to our email experience?

* Quick Links – and this has what to do with email?

* Superstars – marginally useful I guess

* Pictures in Chat – hmm had that with Gtalk already

* Fixed width font – huh? why?

* Custom keyboard shortcuts – again a marginally useful option I guess but what this to do with email?

* Mouse gestures – once more what does this have to do with email?

* Signature Tweaks – this is something that should have been a default option just as it is with any email client.

* Random signature – what’s next a random tagline option?

* Custom date formats – why?

* Muzzle - <scratching head>

* Old Snakey – great another way to avoid dealing with email

* Email addict – gee would just closing the Gmail window work just as well?

* Hide Unread Counts – why?

One would have hoped that all that 20% time being used up would have resulted in something more useful that most of what is in that list. I realize that Gmail is the snitz in the tech crowd but really all this hoopla over a bunch of basically useless code hacks is amazing. At least I’m not alone in wondering what all the noise was about.

Next time Google decides to try for some press I hope it is over something that is actually useful.

Conversation Tags: Google, Gmail, hype