Although today isn’t actually the first day of April, it is the last official weekday before the makeshift holiday. As such, companies like Google took to the internet to “announce” several upcoming products that are too good (and funny) to be true. Which April Fool’s Day product announcement from Google was your favorite?
With April Fools’ Day falling on a weekend this year, the festivities are occurring slightly earlier. Like last year, we’ll be covering all the gag products and services from Google and Alphabet, as well as the best ones from the rest of the tech industry.
Google has acknowledged that one of its April Fools jokes backfired when it started causing real embarrassment to some Gmail users. It has now pulled the joke feature.
Google added a ‘send + mic drop’ button last night, that added a GIF of a Minion dropping a microphone to an email reply, before archiving the thread. It was intended as a fun way for users to express their desire to exit an email conversation, but the company made one schoolboy UI error: it put the joke button right where the usual ‘send and archive’ one sits …
Google is apparently kicking off the April Fools’ Day jokes super, super early this year. As has been noticed by several Android developers (via Android Police), the company seems to putting a new section called “Reviews from Space” in the developer console. The review, as you can see above, comes from one “Alex Scott”, sports 5 rocket ships, and was written on April 1st, 2029. Oh, and the device and physical conditions of the user are hilarious, too…
Google has started the April Fools Day fun a bit early with a new Pac-Man easter egg allowing users to play the classic arcade game on the streets of Google Maps. Here’s how to do it:
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Remember that Pokemon April Fools joke that Google ran earlier in the month? While it was an obvious gag, it turns out that there was a slight piece of truth to this challenge. Google is reportedly sending out reward notifications to participants who completed its Pokemon Master challenge by finding all 151 of the pocket monsters. While we’re not too sure of what Mountain View is sending to the people who finished its challenge, we do know that it’s a physical item, because the company advised participants that it’ll take four to six weeks for their reward to arrive.
[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…
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It’s not quite April 1st here on the east coast of the United States, but the jokes are already starting to roll in. Earlier today Google announced a few of its own annual pranks. Now, HTC is getting into the spirit of the holiday by announcing the HTC Gluuv, an HTC One M8-connected glove that looks like something right out of a 90s sci-fi b-movie.
Along with the Gluuv, HTC announced an accompanying product: a boombox activated and controlled by the Gluuv called the BoomBass. Social features built into the Gluuv allow you to use gestures to interact with real-life items on social networks (like giving something a thumbs-up to like it on Facebook).
And what great wearable tech would be complete without an absurdly high-resolution camera? The Gluuv has an 87.2 MP camera built in. And of course, the Gluuv supports third-party apps. Because everything needs apps, even gloves.
Meanwhile, Samsung has also introduced a very similar “product” on its own website. The Samsung Fingers include solar charging, the ability to detect hot and cold objects, a voice (and snap) amplifier, video-calling capability, gesture support, and—for whatever reason—a laser. Samsung’s page isn’t nearly as flashy as HTC’s, but the fictional glove does seem to have more features.
Also if you pull its finger, it plays a farting noise. So yeah, there’s that.
Update: Roku is sort of in the same ballpark.
Update 2: Toshiba too?!? Maybe there’s something to this idea…
As we look to the end of 2013 and turn around to see the Google of the last year, we know it’s been a good year. Forget concerns over Google’s purchase of Boston Dynamic’s Robotic program and the joke notion that Google and Skynet will eventually be one. This is a company that surpassed the 1,000 share price in the stock market and brought Google Glass to market as a new form of wearable technology. With these stories and more in mind, let’s take a look at the top 5 Google stories on 9to5Google in 2013. These stories were selected in order by the amount of traffic they had in a single 24 hour period and don’t necessarily reflect the importance of the story itself. In other words, these are the stories you read the most over the course of this year.
Google has begun its yearly unveiling of April Fool’s Day jokes with some clever new ideas that probably come up in strategy meetings throughout the year.
Google Nose. Searching a query on Google and clicking the ‘Nose Beta’ button can only find this ‘service’. The service isn’t real of course, but you can read about its features on Nose’s homepage. Funniest bit?
Don’t ask, don’t smell: For when you’re wary of your query – SafeSearch included.
More Google jokes are on the way…
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