I really hope if your grandma passes away you get a phone call. Maybe I am old fashioned.

I was one of around 30 grandchildren of my grandma's 12 children. I heard about her death via email— it would have been impractical to share the news otherwise, or to ask her caretakers to make 50 or even 12 calls while dealing with all the exigencies of the funeral.

This is silly.

My grandmother had around 35 grandchildren and 10 greatgrandchildren when she passed. Notifying everyone wasn't hard. One child called a couple of their siblings those called a couple more siblings and/or their kids. Their kids told their kids. Then the inlaws called their sides of the family. Everyone was notified in a few hours. It wasn't even organized beforehand, these things happen in an ad hoc manner. No one person even had the contact information for even half of the others.

Calling trees. That's the way we did it years ago.

I'd rather receive an email from the source than a call from someone who heard from someone who heard from someone that grandma is probably dead.

And they take a ton of work to organize.

Friend/Family calling trees take no effort to organize and happen organically. You mostly just call the people who you are closest to and the others do the same with a few people making sure so and so who isn't close to anyone gets the word. I have an absolutely gigantic family on both sides (50 or so cousins total) and this had always been the way it operated on both sides of the family and there was never any advanced planning.

In fact when the news is very distressing (spouse death) the person usually only notifies one or two very close people. Those people make sure the word gets out.

I imagine the same thing was said about writing a letter when the phone was still young.

Relevant creepiness from Google Now: https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/4cpabs/google_now_...

good idea for Google's next year's April Fools joke...Not