It seems like a lifetime ago, but there was actually a time where April Fools’ Day pranks from tech companies were novel, creative, and actually entertaining. More than a decade ago, for example, Google put together a fictitious account of how it uses pigeons to help organize its search results, a technology it dubbed PigeonRank. It was fun, it was innocent, and it was quite obviously all a joke.
These days, though, it seems that every single tech company on the planet is obsessed with rolling out April Fool’s Day pranks that are weighted more towards deception than quirky fun. The results can sometimes be beyond embarrassing, with Google’s 2016 Gmail Mic Drop prank being a prime example. If you recall, Google incorporated a special send button that added a gif of a minion from Despicable Me dramatically dropping a microphone at the bottom of emails. Additionally, recipients were unable to respond to such emails, hence the mic drop aspect. It seemed innocent enough, but users soon began hitting the wrong ‘send’ button by accident and chaos ensued.
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Microsoft becomes the hero we need by banning April Fool’s Day pranks originally appeared on BGR.com on Thu, 28 Mar 2019 at 06:50:02 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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