Skip to main content

Google continues April Fool’s pranks with accidentally-ironic emoji web translation for mobile Chrome

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3NXNnoGr3Y]

In keeping up with tradition, Google started rolling out its annual April Fool’s Day pranks last 🌇 and has continued into the early 🌅. A new post on the Chrome blog announced the availability of a new Google 🇺🇸🔄🇫🇷 feature that converts webpages into emoji icons for faster 📖:

Suddenly we realized that we could apply the magic of Emoji to webpages. Not only does this pictorial and theatrical language allow us to communicate complex emotions, it’s also far more compact. One Emoji symbol can easily replace dozens of characters, improving efficiency and comprehension on the go. It turns out the best way to communicate in the future is to look to the past: the ancient Egyptians were really onto something with their hieroglyphs.

The 😜 has a bit of an ironic twist, though…

As it turns out, the 💻 version of Chrome isn’t capable of rendering emoji icons—let alone 🔄 anything into them—even when running on 💻 that support emoji (like Windows 8️⃣ and OS X 🌊), according to an open 🐞 filed on the Chromium project page.

Instead, 👥 on 💻 will just see an empty ⬜️ in place of the icon. Hopefully the 💻 🐞 will be squashed soon, as a 🌎 without 😀 is 🐴💩.

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

You’re reading 9to5Google — experts who break news about Google and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Google on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Don’t know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel