TechnesstivityROUNDUP: This Year’s April Fools Pranks From Google
Google has a history of April Fool’s day pranks. This year they seem to have quite a number of crackers. Here’s a roundup of the pranks the company pulled this year.
The first one I noticed was Google Nose BETA
It could be a great idea only that, you would look rather silly at work if you were intently sniffing your screen. Opting to try it out encourages you to do just that. You’d do it too and then linger on wondering why it’s not working. Read more here.
Next up is Gmail Blue
Gmail Blue is a a prank feature that tints your entire experience blue. Think of it like black and white only bluer. The video is a bit funny, but that’s where it ends. It of course is not a real feature.
Then, YouTube Shutting Down On April 1st
The video explaining the shut down and competition is pretty much brilliant — it features several YouTube stars from over the years, including Antoine Dodson, David Devore Jr. — the dazed post-dental appointment boy, Judson Laipply of the “Evolution of Dance” fame and others.
Google says that the whole point of YouTube was to find the best video in the world and that it is shutting down today. They are going to take a decade to find the winner and then post the winner on a YouTube relaunch and that’s the only thing that’ll be there.
Google Maps: Treasure hunt
Google Maps is essentially telling you that there is treasure near you and you can find it. What it’s really doing is using it’s own Custom Style/Theme Maps API to style the whole world like and olde treasure map.
Google+ Your Photos +Emotion
In this post Erik-Murphy-Chutorian, a G+ Photos Curation Lead, talks about a new feature that adds emoticons to a photo to see what people were feeling.
This one actually does something, for fun I’d like them to keep this feature but they won’t. Try it out on your photos.
Are there any Google pranks we missed? Please leave us a comment with a link to it. Don’t forget to have a laugh at last year’s Google pranks.
