Hacker News Reader

Comment by studentrob | Hacker News Reader

Hmm. Laughter doesn't scale when you're not funny. Plenty of viral YouTube videos have shown that it sure as heck can scale.

The problem with this button is fairly obvious in hindsight. Google injected humor into many people's business and personal worlds where it wasn't wanted or expected.

This article is yet another apologist for what is clearly a lack of foresight by Google.

By the way, I notice society explaining away a lot of behavior by others lately. People seem afraid to criticize products and other people these days.

Let's call this what it is: a massive mistake. Google corrected it as soon as they realized it and apologized. We can move on.

View on HN

Well said. It would be interesting to know who thought this was funny (beyond its creators, maybe), and how, and why.

Eh, I dunno if a witch hunt is needed. They fixed it pretty quickly and admitted their mistake. Any other repercussions I'm sure would be dealt with internally. No need to scar someone's record by holding their feet to the fire over an April Fool's joke. It wasn't particularly sneaky or corrupt. We hold Google to such a high standard. We should let them recover when they admit their mistakes.

I'm absolutely, totally not calling for a witch hunt against Google; as the parent said, they made a mistake, they corrected it, we can move on.

BUT I strongly disagree with the post that seems to argue (without saying it plainly) that the prank was indeed funny and it's the fault of "the Internet" if it didn't work, because, it seems, masses can't take a joke.

Ohhh yeah I agree. Not sure who wrote that but it seems like it isn't official Google speak. As for anyone else, well, individuals say dumb things sometimes. We just hope a collective group doesn't act like a bunch of thoughtless clowns =)

To quote Uncle Albert and Bert:

> I always say, there's nothing like a good joke.

> No, and that was nothing like a good joke.

If the stories of people missing out on job offers and so forth are true, Google did real damage to their lives and should make amends somehow.

I'll freely grant that I don't know what, specifically, they should do, but "sorry lol" doesn't really cut it.

If I were one of those duped users, I'd expect a service subscription refund from Google. Or maybe a few months' service on the house. At least.

Well, that's the interesting question, isn't it.

Google offered a high quality service for free. (Well, "free" as in they're selling eyeballs to advertisers, but, you know. Internet free.) They aggressively promoted it to the entire world. Literally a billion people took them up on it and, after years of reliable service, have made it a central part of their professional and personal lives.

What is Google's responsibility at this point to not grief those billion people? Whether by bad April Fool's pranks, or anything else?

If the takeaway from your comment is that the world would be better if people paid for their email service, I wouldn't disagree. But how we get back to that point is not at all clear.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com