Google Hoaxes for April Fool’s Day
Google might be one of the few companies in the internet who “seriously” participates in the April Fool’s day every year. A lot of GMail users were fooled by Google last year when they launched the hoax GMail Paper. (Google got me on this one)
“The service offered to allow users of Google’s free webmail service to add e-mails to a “Paper Archive,” which Google would print (on “96% post-consumer organic soybean sputum”) and mail via traditional post. The service would be free, supported by bold, red advertisements printed on the back of the printed messages.”
This year, Google rolled out sixteen April Fool’s Day Hoaxes. It was also YouTube’s first year to participate in Google’s first of April tradition.
Among the Google’s hoaxes this year are the following:
- Virgle
Google campaigns for human settlement on Mars. Clever isn’t it?(more info)
- Adsense for Conversations
Start displaying unobtrusive ads on a screen above your head. Google Adsense puts ‘context’ into contextual advertising. Relevant ads are displayed on-screen during conversations. - Yogurt
Orkut’s name was displayed as Yogurt
- Dajare “organizing the world’s laughter” in Japan. Hehehehe
- gDay
a new beta search technology that will search web pages 24 hours before they are created. - Google Dialect Translation
a Google Translate service which translates Korean dialects into standard Korean language.
- Gmail Custom Time Allows users to “pre-date” their messages and choose to have the message appear as “read” or “unread”. “Be on time. Every time.”
- Google Calendar is Feeling Lucky
An “I’m feeling Lucky” option was added to Google Calendar. Google will automatically set you for a scheduled date with the Hollywood Stars.
- Google Talk
Google announced plans to, on April 22, 2008 (Earth Day), shorten all conversations over Google Talk thereby reducing the energy required to transmit chats in an effort to reduce carbon output. - YouTube On April 1, 2008, all featured videos on the Australian and UK homepages, and later, all international homepages, of Google-owned YouTube linked to a video of Rick Astley’s song Never Gonna Give You Up, causing all users of the website who clicked on featured videos to be Rickrolled.
Quoted from Wikipedia.
Related posts:
- Google Pages – Yet Another WYSIWYG
- Google me
- Davao Bloggers and SEOs meet Ms. Google (Earth?) Philippines
- Google or WordPress?
- An Open Letter to Yahoo! Mail
Tagged with: april fool's day, google, google hoax, Personal
Originally sharing his experiences of being a "yagit" in Davao, he now tries to find his luck in the busy district of Makati. He still finds time to blog and go on weekend trips despite his hectic schedule. Join Batang Yagit, now that he has developed from "rags" to a more abundant supply of rags.
