Google cancels April Fools’ jokes this year
theverge.com
theverge.com
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/04/01/gmails-mic...
* I still use the Internet for my job, but Apple isn’t pulling any pranks on their developer documentation.
I know I am the minority (here on HN especially with its long tradition of hating April fools’) but those are my two cents.
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?
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.
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...
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.
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. ;)
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.
Fortunately, this is _exactly_ what someone who is planning a great April Fools joke would say...
That being said, the demise of modern April Fool's jokes will not be something I grieve.
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 ;)
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.
Happy April fools day!