[uptown]

Here's my guess - Google will offer a service where you can have some or all of your mail forwarded to a BufferBox. That mail will be scanned by Google - applying the technology they honed from scanning books, and possibly also the technology they purchased with re-captcha. So now you've got mail in digital form, which they'll make available to you online for review - with the option to have things you want handled in-person to either your actual mailbox, or to your buffer-box.

The problem is - people have no experiencing with Google related to mail - so they may be reluctant to trust them to be part of this equation. So they start with packages - offering a service to help out with package delivery, and acclimating people to Google being part of the mail-delivery equation. When people are ready, they offer the scanning service.

[huggah]

Besides the legal and regulatory hurdles Google would have to overcome to make this work, I don't think Google wants to be in the business of making an industry more efficient when that industry doesn't need to exist in the future at all. That is to say, why scan mail when you can just convince people to use email?

Packages, on the other hand, will still need to be delivered for the foreseeable future.

[uptown]

Mail will certainly decrease, but I don't think its ever going away. And there's already companies that provide a similar service. Anyway, maybe I'm wrong - but it'll be interesting to see what they do with their acquisition.