Scoop’s Views

It’s been several weeks since the folks at Google, writing on the Gmail Blog, asked for Gmailers to send in video snippets showing how they use Gmail. More specifically, the idea was to get, from Gmailers’ points-of-view, “a behind-the-scenes look at how Gmail messages “really” travels around the world,” according to Gmail’s product manager, Arielle Reinstein.

In the end, though, Google may have just created a cool video that will help them push their brand recognition a little higher to Internet newbies or locked-in-a-hole AOLers who aren’t familiar with the Internet outside AOL’s walls.

When Google asked several weeks ago, in a video posted at YouTube — not Google Video (odd, huh?) — the mission was simple: show how Gmail really travels around the world in a video clip.

According to Google’s post about the Gmail video being released, Arielle Reinstein wrote that more than 1,100 videos were submitted from more than 65 countries. Maybe that means 66 countries were represented, but no matter — a lot of places are represented on the official Gmail video map.

From just eyeballing the official Google map showing the location of videos clips selected for use in the official Gmail video, it looks like — from a crude scan of the flags, that one video from Argentina is the southern-most video submitted. A Gmail video clip from Iceland appears to be the northern-most video submitted. It surprises me no one from Finland, Norway, or Greenland submitted videos. Well, at least not videos that were accepted into the final Gmail video cut.

After watching the video, do you want your own Gmail envelope? Simply print it and you’re set.