Google buying back gmail addresses?

When I first was moving to NY my sister and bro-in-law gave me an airport express (which is great… playing music from my laptop across the room is money) either for a graduation or xmas gift… whatever not the point. WIth the acquisition of the express I was left with not one but two wireless routers for my 400 sq foot apartment. Not really necessary. It was then that I decided I would share out internet to the building with one of the routers and use the other for my internal network. I didn’t want just anyone to be able to use the free internet, I wanted them to ask first. So I decided to put “email.freewifi@gmail.com.for access” as the name of the router. Over the course of 15 months that the router was up it received one email and I happily granted that user access. Now that you have the background on my wireless setup I can get to the point…

About a month ago I checked this freewifi gmail account to see I had an email, sort of excited I opened it up. As I read the email I become slightly confused as I see it is from an @google.com email address and the guy had a signature stating that he was a google engineer. As I read through the short paragraph I realize that he is interested in talking about the free wireless project that he is helping with out in San Fran. I then replied to him that I have no involvement in the project and it was simply a personal email address. A few more emails fly back and fourth and before long he was asking if he could purchase this email address from me. I replied that I have no intent of selling it but for the right price I could let it go… ha, let go a free email address that google gave to me in the first place. So, he explains that he is working on this project with his own time and money and he couldn’t afford a large sum, he then offered $100. I said thanks but no thanks. He then said he could offer $150 but he couldn’t offer any more than that. I replied back saying $200 bucks and it was a deal… not really thinking much of it. He said ok, but was traveling and couldn’t pay until his return (two weeks away)... I shot him my mailing address and forgot about the whole thing. Well, on tuesday night coming home from bowling I got a strange envelop with $200 cash wrapped in a white piece of paper saying “For the freewifi email address”. How sketchy is that? I replied to him saying that I received payment and would release the password shortly. Yesterday I sent him an email with temporary password to the account and the whole escapade was over.

How weird is it for a google employee email a gmail user, ask to buy a gmail address for a project, and then send them cash via USPS. Pretty weird if you ask me. There is a chance I could have held out for some more cash, but I am more than happy with the $200 for an email address that I rarely use in the first place and received for free.