Cr-48 mail list mistake shows who gets a laptop

Over the past weekend, I checked my Gmail on my phone and was surprised to see over 100 emails all coming from what seemed to be a bunch of random and confused people who were also receiving the emails. After a few seconds of looking, it became apparent that this was in fact a mailing list group for the Cr-48 laptop, and we were all on it.

I didn’t mind all that much, since I knew that it would be easy enough to remove all the emails at once, should I need to… but that’s not what seemed to be the general response from all the other people on the list. Many were upset about getting all the emails and being put on the list without being asked. Others were just curious about the list, since they knew they had signed up to receive a Cr-48, yet had heard nothing at all from Google about it. Some people thought this was how Google was notifying them that they are going to receive a laptop. (In all actuality, none of the people who got laptops were ever notified about it before just finding it in their mail.)

After about a day’s worth of the mailing list bouncing emails between thousands of users, one of the list admins finally put a stop to it and sent out one final email that revealed a key piece of information which they probably decided was just best to not hide anymore. Here’s the email in full, sent from chrome-notebook-team at google dot com:

Earlier this morning, you may have received a large number of emails from chrome-notebook-pilot-users@googlegroups.com regarding the Chrome notebook Pilot program user forum. We apologize for this inconvenience, and you will not receive any more messages from this address. Instructions for deleting these messages are at the end of this email.

What happened? We planned to launch our Chrome Notebook Pilot forum next week to all users who had been selected for the Pilot program. Last night, around midnight Pacific time, a user discovered this forum and posted a message. Unfortunately, we had misconfigured this forum to email every post to every member. Thus, the first post started an avalanche of responses. Some messages were unsubscribe requests, others were thoughtful comments or questions, but all of them were emailed to every user. We have since deleted this group.

We’ve created a brand new user forum, which you can sign up for here:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/chrome-notebook-pilot

Rest assured: you will not be added to this forum unless you sign up using the link above.

The goal of the forum is to provide a centralized place for Pilot users to share their Chrome notebook experiences and tips. In addition, with a centralized forum, our team can more effectively respond to your questions and feedback.

If you are receiving this email and have not yet received a Cr-48, you should be hearing from us soon. Again, our apologies for the flood of emails, and we hope you will join us at the new forum.

Chrome Notebook Team

—-
How to delete previous messages:

Gmail
1. In the Gmail search box, type “from:chrome-notebook-pilot-

users” and press Enter.
2. Click the checkbox to the left of the Archive button to Select All.
3. At the top of the search results, click the link that says “Select all XX conversations in Search results.”
4. Click the Delete button. You should not receive any more messages from this address.

Other email programs
1. Use the search function in your email program to find messages with the sender chrome-notebook-pilot-users@googlegroups.com.
2. Select all the messages in the search results.
3. Delete the messages. You should not receive any more messages from this address.

—-
You are receiving this email message because you requested communication from Google when you applied for and were accepted into the Chrome Notebook Pilot Program.
Google Inc. | 1600 Amphitheatre Pky | Mountain View, CA 94043

I found one piece of text quite interesting in that email….

If you are receiving this email and have not yet received a Cr-48, you should be hearing from us soon.

I obviously don’t have an easy way of confirming this, except personally contacting the people who were sending confused emails in the list, but the way I interpret this statement and the email is that all users who were selected to receive the Cr-48 have been added to the list, whether they have received the laptop yet or not.

I would put my money on the fact that it’s safe to say, if you were put on that list and had no clue why, you should be getting your Cr-48 in the mail sometime soon.