How does Gmail's "Undo Send" work? Everyone says its just a delay but...

April 21, 2015 7:18 AM

In Gmail Labs there is an "Undo Send" feature, i.e. after a message is sent, for ~5 seconds an "Undo Send" appears. EVERYONE (1, 2, 3) says Gmail just adds a 5 second delay before it sends but its not true! If I open a new e-mail window, send something to the 2nd address, it will show up almost immediately. If I click "Undo Send" in the sender's e-mail, the e-mail disappears in the recipients box! ALSO, if I send it, open it immediately in the recipients box, then click "Undo Send" it disappears from the senders box, but Stays in the recipient box. Obviously not just a simple 5 sec delay, anyone know what really going on?
posted by 1inabillionmistake to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Best answer: If the sender and recipient are both using gmail, then yes, google can remove the message from the recipient's inbox. If that's not the case, then the delay applies.
posted by mikeh at 7:23 AM on April 21, 2015 [5 favorites]

I agree with mikeh. If both sender and receiver are gmail addresses, Gmail "owns" the message file throughout transit and can remove it. Once it leaves Gmail's system, though, as in, the recipient is not a gmail address, Gmail can't delete the message file anymore and would have to deal with the external processes involved in emailing, so it makes sense that it would just wait 5 seconds.
posted by jillithd at 8:11 AM on April 21, 2015

I think most email systems can do this internally. I was a GroupWise administrator many years ago and GW had functionality even back then to retrieve sent emails as long as the emails stayed within the system.

I'm not sure if this is the case in Gmail but in GroupWise you could only pull back emails that had not yet been opened and read. (Pretty sure Lotus Notes was the same way but it's been so long I can't be sure.)
posted by JaredSeth at 8:25 AM on April 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Email works essentially like real mail - once you send a letter via the Post Office, you can't recall it, the best you can do is ask the recipient to not read it.

GMail's "Undo" is a delay in sending the email, there's literally no way for Google to recall a sent email.

BUT if both the sender and recipient use GMail, then they can go retrieve the email because it never actually left Google. Just like interoffice mail, you can go up to the other floor and get your letter back before the recipient collects it.
posted by jpeacock at 11:13 AM on April 21, 2015

Yeah, AOL email used to (still does?) have this feature, I believe. You could retract emails sent to other AOL email users. Presumably because AOL "owned" the email.
posted by easter queen at 3:03 PM on April 21, 2015