If you are one of those people who is never surprised at how silly people can be, then perhaps you will find this story dull.

However, for the rest of us hopeful humans, the story of Shane Symington leaves us clutching our lattes a little too tightly and screaming a little too loud.

Shane appears to be a somewhat lonely U.K. mailman who went on MySpace looking for company. He found it in Angela Gates. She chatted to him for several weeks before revealing that she needed money to help with her mother’s medical and funeral expenses.

For so many, such a request would scream “PHISH!” But for Shane, it whispered, “I’ll pay you back when I get my $2 million inheritance.” So in a few installments, he handed over about $160,000. (Did I mention that Shane is a mailman?)

Once she’d squeezed him till she’d caught sight of his pips, Angela texted him to reveal she was both very grateful and a man from Nigeria.

Shortly afterward, Shane got an e-mail from another woman who claimed that she had been caught up in the same scam. His trust as firm as an oak trunk in a storm, he gave her some money to hire a couple of ex-FBI agents to track down Angela.

You already know what happened to that money (yes, another $50,000 or so), don’t you?

Google Inc will kill a program to sell newspaper advertising because it is not making enough money, a blow to its efforts to expand its ad expertise beyond the Internet.

Google will shut the Print Ads program on February 28, the company said on its blog on Tuesday afternoon. The two-year-old service was designed to help newspapers make money by enticing Google advertisers to expand into print newspaper sales.

“We weren’t providing a meaningful revenue impact to our newspaper partners so we are focusing our efforts on how we can do that quickly and effectively using online tools,” Google spokesman Brandon McCormick said.

Print Ads customers who booked campaigns can place ads through March 31, Google said on its blog.

For Google, which has built its larger-than-life reputation as a master of the online advertising business, shutting down the print program is a rare failure.