But you're praising Google for cancelling a bunch of jokes that have absolutely nothing to do with medical advice. Stop conflating the two so utterly.
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.