Well done Google for cancelling the jokes 5 days before otherwise this would have been seen as an April Fools paradox.
To be fair, its perfect timing to call off the April fools jokes anyway since at a time like this, public health is at serious risk when reading 'medical content' on the internet in general from people and sources pretending to be 'medical experts'; especially on social media.
When Fake News Day arrives, take everything with a dose of skepticism.
Google's April Fools jokes were pretty benign anyway... obviously anything related to the virus would be in terribly bad taste, but I don't see why something in the same vein as https://maps.googleblog.com/2012/03/begin-your-quest-with-go... would need to be cancelled. IF anything, we need the humor now more than ever to lift people's spirits.
> On a larger scale, he says that the world's data centers in 2010 accounted for 130 million tons of CO2e, or a quarter of a percent of the world's global total. Berners-Lee projected that the world's data centers will produce 250 to 340 million tons CO2e by 2020.
Sure it fooled people, it fooled me, but was it really funny? I mean, did you laugh? I was surprised (pleasantly even), but it's not like it made me giggle.
My Aunt would disagree. She had a bunch of her pictures of her late husband ruined because Google thought it would be cute to Photoshop David Hasselhoff into them. Especially some of the last pictures she had of him in the hospital (he died pancreatic cancer), and "The Hoff" was showing up in them with his thumbs up.
After looking through them, I noticed that at least Google duplicated the pictures and left the original on alone. But still it would have been better if the doctored photos would have been put in a separate folder.
Oh, and lets not forget the "Reply and drop mic" button that showed up right next to the Send button on Gmail. That wasn't benign.
Are you sure you're not suffering from some mild depression? The first signs are the total disregard, and sometimes anger, towards humor. Depression is serious.
It's not unreasonable to decline to laugh at a joke that is not funny. Critical services are no place for whimsy, and while it's disappointing that Google has apparently taken so long to figure that out, that they seem finally to have done so is all to the good.
Scrutinising unverified medical advice on social media which could be false or a joke isn't a sign of depression, it is skepticism. The concern is towards medical advice from unverified sources like social media related to the outbreak which is very serious if not dangerous; joking or not. It's just as serious as people jokingly pretending to be doctors or medical professionals to diagnose people on the internet such as yourself.
It's kind of bad taste and timing to throw around April Fools themed medical advice around this pandemic when there are people actually taking anything 'recommended' by so called 'social media experts' to cure themselves from the disease don't you think? Unless you're willing to trust everything you see and read on the internet?
For me Google.com has the search box and then a link to “DO THE FIVE. Help stop coronavirus” and then some news tiles, the second tile is about protecting your family from coronavirus.
Google.com is directly giving health advice. Any joke on that page will be related to that advice.
Would it be appropriate to redirect those links to Rick Astley videos on April 1? Even the other links? Can you see how that would undermine Google’s credibility?
The jokes usually aren't on the front page in the first place. It would be bad to put it right there, on such a sparse page, next to the coronavirus note. But that's a tiny tiny subset of possible jokes. And even then, it's not messing with the medical advice. Give them the tiniest amount of credit.
> Can you see how that would undermine Google’s credibility?
Do you honestly think I might be okay with the specific action of redirecting the coronavirus links, and that it's a fair representation of my point? Or are you falsely equating that with 'jokes on the same page' and 'jokes on other pages' as a deliberate strawman?
Google has established themselves as an authority on the topic of Coronavirus by putting those links on their home page. Similarly news.google.com has a link to see news about Coronavirus. If Google then adds a joke to other properties or pages how do I know what to trust? Should I even bother clicking the Coronavirus links?
Your previous comment said the joke would have nothing to do with coronavirus. The point I am trying to make is that everything Google does right now is related to the coronavirus. As evidence to support that position I provide the front page and news.google.com.
I have made no disingenuous arguments here and I would appreciate you not accusing me of doing so.
> The point I am trying to make is that everything Google does right now is related to the coronavirus.
Please. I doubt google is putting anything approaching 1% of their resources into it. It takes so little effort to add an advice page and a news category. A bit of software to help with dealing with the disease is a nice gesture but they're not a coronavirus company.
> I have made no disingenuous arguments here and I would appreciate you not accusing me of doing so.
You asked me a pretty insulting question. And don't ignore the 'or' in that sentence. If you think your question was fair, then I was not accusing you.
But we can drop that if you want. I still think you're extremely wrong to equate any link on any page as so close to the coronavirus links that it would discredit them. Google already has tons of nonsense links, after all.
I praised Google for the reason why they cancelled their April fools jokes, given the current climate and possible bad timing. "Google will take the year off from that tradition out of respect for all those fighting the Covid-19 pandemic."[0] Google also gives verified medical advice about preventing the spread of Covid-19 and Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube have all done the same to combat misinformation and unverified medical advice on their platforms.
Unless you think it makes sense for them to show a bunch of April fools jokes on the front page with the covid-19 advice also present there?
It is relevant and it does support my original argument since I agreed with Google cancelling the April fools jokes for another time, as it would be bad timing due to the seriousness of the Covid-19 pandemic regardless if the jokes are on the front page, Gmail, Maps or wherever on Google.
In relation to that it's bad enough that there is false and misleading medical content and advice floating around the internet and on social media which is very dangerous for non-medical experts. Thus, such resources should be used to promote medical content from verified sources for lots of people seeking clarity of the outbreak, since Google and others already have the reach to do this and they are indeed doing this.
My point is there's a time and place for April fools jokes. This April probably isn't the wisest of times when being in a middle of a pandemic. Especially if you're running a large social network or search engine with hundreds of millions of daily users potentially consuming and sharing medical advice or content which could be misleading or unverified.
Google's april fools jokes were great at first when it was a new and growing company with it's don't be evil motto. Now it feels like the old dude at the club trying to stay relevant and cool.
It's not just that they're not cool, it's just that when you have billions of users, even if only 0.00001% takes the joke seriously it can lead to personal tragedy such as people losing their jobs.
To be fair, that's a horrible idea for an April fool's prank. Ideally, they shouldn't do any actual real harm. Like actually having that button work as they described was just stupid. Maybe if it didn't actually let you press the button or did something different but still sent your email...but to actually make it do that...someone should have realized something bad was going to happen.
Weird flex with 'unskippable paywall' then link it with something dodgy.
The archive link produces a Warning: Potential Security Risk Ahead message in Firefox.
Edit: it would be nice to know why everyone is so upset with such an innocuous comment? It has to be something else, that has pissed you off, isn't it? ;-P
Thank you for the explanation. The original article is certainly not paywalled in my jurisdiction, hence the consternation, at using an alternative source.
Do you use Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 DNS? (Firefox does so by default if you live in the US, see network settings at the bottom of about:preferences) It can't resolve archive.is because 1.1.1.1 doesn't support ECS.
That's the most unfunny over-elaborate April fools idea I've heard. The fact that nobody thought it could backfire and the passive aggressive nature of the idea speaks loudly of how out of touch with reality Google engineers are.
April 1 is an annual holiday for me. I unplug from the internet* and try to avoid hearing of these jokes completely. They used to be funny, but now companies are just trying too hard. It’s a great excuse for a detox.
* I still use the Internet for my job, but Apple isn’t pulling any pranks on their developer documentation.
By far my favourite one was Google Smell (or whatever was its "official" name). I had people in the office asking me if their computer/screen was broken or incompatible because they couldn't smell anything.
I think we will look back on this as a specific marker as the defined end of an era. April Fool’s Day is as close as anything is to hacker christmas.
The founders are gone, the company participates in PRISM for warrantless email snooping, they got reprimanded for conspiring with Jobs et al to cheat staff out of wages, the staff have to fight with management to not take military defense contracts or promulgate lies for the CCP, and now finally no more April fool’s jokes. Microsoft famously banned easter eggs a long time ago; I never would have thought Google would take this step.
For me personally, this is the final nail in the coffin, although I’m sure many people with closer relationships to Google probably believe that the ship sailed several years ago.
It’s tragic. I remember when they were the upstart.
> I never would have thought Google would take this step.
This is what finally did it for you? Silly april pranks which became corporatized a long time ago.
> The founders are gone
They aren't gone. Unless I missed some major news, Brin and Page still control over 50% of alphabet shares and hence control the company outright. They are the two most important people at alphabet right now.
> promulgate lies for the CCP
Google got banned from China for being part of the US state/government. Similar to why huwaei got banned from the US.
Google and China are not on friendly terms. Maybe you can blame Apple for being cozy with china, but certainly not google. The anti-china propaganda is getting sillier and sillier. And please drop the CCP nonsense, it's getting cringey.
> One of the “features” of Dragonfly was presenting fake air pollution data provided by the state.
Oh my god, the horror. The horror. Did they also post official weather data as well?
> My comment was about Google, not the CCP. We already know the CCP are liars.
Then why bring it up in the first place? If we already know, then no need to propagandize it over and over again right? After all a political entity lying is like saying water is wet? Right?
"Do things that don't scale" is about differentiating yourself by throwing people hours at a problem. This is the opposite of what Google does. I'd rather they work on doing support that doesn't scale, as opposed to figuring out how to do a joke that doesn't usually scale
Also that quote was about leveraging being able to do things that don't scale when you only have 100 customers, because that's something large companies like Google can't compete with you on, because by definition they can't do things that don't scale unless it's some skunkswork project
In my opinion we need fun more than ever, but resurrecting fun will require someone who is willing to stand up to the people who believe that everything must be serious.
Unfortunately I don't think it's possible for a corporation to be funny, unless they're willing to hand over a large amount of power to a single funny person (or a small team of funny people).
A product team of mostly unfunny employees brainstorming "funny" ideas and then filtering those ideas through their managers (who themselves are unlikely to be funny) will result in a funny idea exactly zero percent of the time.
Fair enough. Additionally, most large companies are probably too risk-averse to greenlight true comedy. Comedy necessarily involves risk; risk of not having your joke land, risk of offending, and so on. There's a good reason that most comedians try out new material in small venues.
I have a feeling this may have been coming anyway and the coronavirus is a good excuse. Microsoft also did away with AFD jokes a year or two ago to generally positive responses.
I'm in favor of it, to be honest. Like sixQuarks said, it was cute and fun when Google was the scrappy upstart; now that they're the new evil empire it's just depressing.
You know every single year (well maybe not the first one where everyone thought GMail was a prank 2004-04-01) I complained and moaned to everyone within earshot. (That's a significant stretch)
However with the world going 'down to hell in a handbasket' I think I'll miss it. What I mean, I'll miss complaining how pathetic all these corporation are to everyone. ;)
Wise decision. It wouldn't have gone well with the Twitterati.
Also, there are better ways to spend resources and digital real estate at the moment (say, just give ad discounts to small businesses) than to create pranks.
Like many people here I'm straddling the two contradictory opinions that Google's April Fool's schtick isn't funny, yet humor is how human beings cope with crisis and those who would ask you to be serious and pious are making it worse.
I see no contradiction. Their AF 'jokes' aren't funny. Maybe if they were, we wouldn't have so many people celebrating the cancellation.
Besides, there's a big difference between a friend emailing you a joke and one of the world's biggest mega-corporations putting a gag on their front page.
99 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 154 ms ] threadTo be fair, its perfect timing to call off the April fools jokes anyway since at a time like this, public health is at serious risk when reading 'medical content' on the internet in general from people and sources pretending to be 'medical experts'; especially on social media.
When Fake News Day arrives, take everything with a dose of skepticism.
Nobody believed that 1GB of free email storage was real, back then ~10MB was the norm.
> On a larger scale, he says that the world's data centers in 2010 accounted for 130 million tons of CO2e, or a quarter of a percent of the world's global total. Berners-Lee projected that the world's data centers will produce 250 to 340 million tons CO2e by 2020.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/01/25...
https://archive.google.com/googlegulp/
After looking through them, I noticed that at least Google duplicated the pictures and left the original on alone. But still it would have been better if the doctored photos would have been put in a separate folder.
Oh, and lets not forget the "Reply and drop mic" button that showed up right next to the Send button on Gmail. That wasn't benign.
The link you posted certainly isn’t.
I disagree. That’s exactly where we need whimsy most lest the world become a drab nightmare land
Should my power company play a trick on me on April fools? Maybe call and tell me my bill is late? Turn the lights off for 5 minutes?
Maybe my landlord could post an eviction notice or tell me my car was stolen.
If you don’t think these are funny please define “funny”. Remember, it should be a definition every user of the service agrees with.
If you need a laugh turn on Netflix and select comedy but leave me out of it.
It's kind of bad taste and timing to throw around April Fools themed medical advice around this pandemic when there are people actually taking anything 'recommended' by so called 'social media experts' to cure themselves from the disease don't you think? Unless you're willing to trust everything you see and read on the internet?
Google.com is directly giving health advice. Any joke on that page will be related to that advice.
Would it be appropriate to redirect those links to Rick Astley videos on April 1? Even the other links? Can you see how that would undermine Google’s credibility?
> Can you see how that would undermine Google’s credibility?
Do you honestly think I might be okay with the specific action of redirecting the coronavirus links, and that it's a fair representation of my point? Or are you falsely equating that with 'jokes on the same page' and 'jokes on other pages' as a deliberate strawman?
Your previous comment said the joke would have nothing to do with coronavirus. The point I am trying to make is that everything Google does right now is related to the coronavirus. As evidence to support that position I provide the front page and news.google.com.
I have made no disingenuous arguments here and I would appreciate you not accusing me of doing so.
Please. I doubt google is putting anything approaching 1% of their resources into it. It takes so little effort to add an advice page and a news category. A bit of software to help with dealing with the disease is a nice gesture but they're not a coronavirus company.
> I have made no disingenuous arguments here and I would appreciate you not accusing me of doing so.
You asked me a pretty insulting question. And don't ignore the 'or' in that sentence. If you think your question was fair, then I was not accusing you.
But we can drop that if you want. I still think you're extremely wrong to equate any link on any page as so close to the coronavirus links that it would discredit them. Google already has tons of nonsense links, after all.
I praised Google for the reason why they cancelled their April fools jokes, given the current climate and possible bad timing. "Google will take the year off from that tradition out of respect for all those fighting the Covid-19 pandemic."[0] Google also gives verified medical advice about preventing the spread of Covid-19 and Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube have all done the same to combat misinformation and unverified medical advice on their platforms.
Unless you think it makes sense for them to show a bunch of April fools jokes on the front page with the covid-19 advice also present there?
[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-google-cancels-a...
And as I said already, the jokes usually aren't on the front page anyway.
In relation to that it's bad enough that there is false and misleading medical content and advice floating around the internet and on social media which is very dangerous for non-medical experts. Thus, such resources should be used to promote medical content from verified sources for lots of people seeking clarity of the outbreak, since Google and others already have the reach to do this and they are indeed doing this.
My point is there's a time and place for April fools jokes. This April probably isn't the wisest of times when being in a middle of a pandemic. Especially if you're running a large social network or search engine with hundreds of millions of daily users potentially consuming and sharing medical advice or content which could be misleading or unverified.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/04/01/gmails-mic...
https://archive.is/3TPqE
The archive link produces a Warning: Potential Security Risk Ahead message in Firefox.
Edit: it would be nice to know why everyone is so upset with such an innocuous comment? It has to be something else, that has pissed you off, isn't it? ;-P
https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/ev0lit/archivetoda...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21155056
* I still use the Internet for my job, but Apple isn’t pulling any pranks on their developer documentation.
The founders are gone, the company participates in PRISM for warrantless email snooping, they got reprimanded for conspiring with Jobs et al to cheat staff out of wages, the staff have to fight with management to not take military defense contracts or promulgate lies for the CCP, and now finally no more April fool’s jokes. Microsoft famously banned easter eggs a long time ago; I never would have thought Google would take this step.
For me personally, this is the final nail in the coffin, although I’m sure many people with closer relationships to Google probably believe that the ship sailed several years ago.
It’s tragic. I remember when they were the upstart.
This is what finally did it for you? Silly april pranks which became corporatized a long time ago.
> The founders are gone
They aren't gone. Unless I missed some major news, Brin and Page still control over 50% of alphabet shares and hence control the company outright. They are the two most important people at alphabet right now.
> promulgate lies for the CCP
Google got banned from China for being part of the US state/government. Similar to why huwaei got banned from the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China
Google banned huwaei from some android updates.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48330310
Google and China are not on friendly terms. Maybe you can blame Apple for being cozy with china, but certainly not google. The anti-china propaganda is getting sillier and sillier. And please drop the CCP nonsense, it's getting cringey.
One of the “features” of Dragonfly was presenting fake air pollution data provided by the state.
My comment was about Google, not the CCP. We already know the CCP are liars.
Oh my god, the horror. The horror. Did they also post official weather data as well?
> My comment was about Google, not the CCP. We already know the CCP are liars.
Then why bring it up in the first place? If we already know, then no need to propagandize it over and over again right? After all a political entity lying is like saying water is wet? Right?
What you think is funny is undoubtedly misleading, harmful or possibly dangerous to someone else out there somewhere.
And best case scenario and it's not harmful? You're still probably about 10% as funny and clever as you think you are.
No thanks.
It's funny how well this principle translates to things other than triaging startup ideas.
And you're annoying many of the people who you aren't harming.
If you learn that what you're doing is harmful or annoying to people just don't do it.
Also that quote was about leveraging being able to do things that don't scale when you only have 100 customers, because that's something large companies like Google can't compete with you on, because by definition they can't do things that don't scale unless it's some skunkswork project
In my opinion we need fun more than ever, but resurrecting fun will require someone who is willing to stand up to the people who believe that everything must be serious.
A product team of mostly unfunny employees brainstorming "funny" ideas and then filtering those ideas through their managers (who themselves are unlikely to be funny) will result in a funny idea exactly zero percent of the time.
I'm in favor of it, to be honest. Like sixQuarks said, it was cute and fun when Google was the scrappy upstart; now that they're the new evil empire it's just depressing.
Look at top voted answers in this and decide for yourself ;)
However with the world going 'down to hell in a handbasket' I think I'll miss it. What I mean, I'll miss complaining how pathetic all these corporation are to everyone. ;)
Also, there are better ways to spend resources and digital real estate at the moment (say, just give ad discounts to small businesses) than to create pranks.
I know I am the minority (here on HN especially with its long tradition of hating April fools’) but those are my two cents.
Fortunately, this is _exactly_ what someone who is planning a great April Fools joke would say...
Happy April fools day!
That being said, the demise of modern April Fool's jokes will not be something I grieve.
Besides, there's a big difference between a friend emailing you a joke and one of the world's biggest mega-corporations putting a gag on their front page.