Which tech giant is the undisputed king of April Fools?

Beware when you start using your computer tomorrow morning. The platform most of the world’s computer users go to in search of truth, will be pedalling some lies. Why? Google really loves April Fools jokes. 

 

The internet giant is hardly alone in the practice of corporate hoaxes; 1 April often sees a tsunami of fabricated and outlandish news stories but Google really excels, if not by quality then certainly by volume. 

 

In 2013 Google played 13 April Fools hoaxes across its services. Which can reasonably lead one to expect 14 tomorrow. 

 

So if you see a headline that says, “Google acquires Venice for $3 trillion”, or when you Google Maps tells you there’s a zombie apocalypse and shows you where the “safe zones” are, chances are it’s an All Fool’s Day hoax. 

 

 

 

In 2013 Google announced it had been having us all on and that YouTube was simply an elaborate contest to find the best video ever. It said the time had come, the winner had been picked and YouTube would close on 1 April for good, with only the winning video accessible to view. 

 

 

Last year Google launched Google Nose on 1 April, a search engine which allows you to search for the smells of your query. It said it did this by sending out a fleet of Street Sense vehicles which inhaled and indexed smells. 

 

 

Six years ago Richard Branson and the Google founders got together to launch Virgle – a permanent human settlement on Mars (a precursor to the Mars One project?) “We’re looking for volunteers – all you need to do is submit a 30 second video to give us taste of who you are and one line as to why you’d like to participate,” said Branson with his wide smile.  

 

 

 

In 2012 Google announced it was to deploy a ‘roo force’ of 1,000 red kangaroos, trained to capture 98 per cent of the Australian bush for Google Maps.

 

 

Google’s first ever foray into the world of April foolery was in 2000 when it revealed MentalPlex. It invited users to project a mental image of what they wanted to search for whilst staring at a an animated gif. 

 

Naturally the searches weren’t successful so Google lined up a range of error messages including: 

 

Error 001: Weak or no signal detected. Upgrade transmitter and retry.

Error 666: Multiple transmitters detected. Silence voices in your head and try again.

Error 01: Brainwaves received in analog. Please re-think in digital.

Error 8P: Unclear on whether your search is about money or monkeys. Please try again.

 

Roll on tomorrow morning. Fingers crossed for the Venice story.