
Google cancels April Fools’ jokes this year - Tomte
https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/27/21197260/google-cancels-april-fools-jokes-2020-coronavirus-covid19-pranks
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sixQuarks
Google's april fools jokes were great at first when it was a new and growing
company with it's don't be evil motto. Now it feels like the old dude at the
club trying to stay relevant and cool.

~~~
patrickaljord
It's not just that they're not cool, it's just that when you have billions of
users, even if only 0.00001% takes the joke seriously it can lead to personal
tragedy such as people losing their jobs.

[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/04/01/gmails-
mic...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/04/01/gmails-mic-drop-
april-fool-backfires-costing-people-their-jobs/)

~~~
FriendlyNormie
Please don’t link directly to sites with unskippable paywalls.

[https://archive.is/3TPqE](https://archive.is/3TPqE)

~~~
snek
archive.org doesn't block you based on which dns resolver you use:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20190914012706/https://www.teleg...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190914012706/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/04/01/gmails-
mic-drop-april-fool-backfires-costing-people-their-jobs/)

~~~
judge2020
For reference:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19493240](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19493240)

~~~
iratewizard
The user says it's bizarre, but it's probably related to cloudflare engaging
in censorship on the web.

~~~
Polylactic_acid
Cloudflare has made a statement, archive.is has not refuted it or left any
comment as far as I know. I'm going to side with cloudflare here.

------
yuchi
In this tragic times I was secretly waiting for Google’s April Fools’. I
always enjoyed them and would have brought a smile on many people’s face.

I know I am the minority (here on HN especially with its long tradition of
hating April fools’) but those are my two cents.

~~~
donatj
Yeah, especially with ThinkGeek gone this year I was really hoping Google had
something good.

------
sneak
I think we will look back on this as a specific marker as the defined end of
an era. April Fool’s Day is as close as anything is to hacker christmas.

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.

~~~
dntbnmpls
> I never would have thought Google would take this step.

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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China)

Google banned huwaei from some android updates.

[https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48330310](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.

~~~
sneak
> _Google got banned from China for being part of the US state /government.
> Similar to why huwaei got banned from the US._

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.

~~~
dntbnmpls
> One of the “features” of Dragonfly was presenting fake air pollution data
> provided by the state.

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?

------
rvz
Well done Google for cancelling the jokes 5 days before otherwise this would
have been seen as an April Fools paradox.

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.

~~~
derision
Google's April Fools jokes were pretty benign anyway... obviously anything
related to the virus would be in terribly bad taste, but I don't see why
something in the same vein as [https://maps.googleblog.com/2012/03/begin-your-
quest-with-go...](https://maps.googleblog.com/2012/03/begin-your-quest-with-
google-maps-8-bit.html) would need to be cancelled. IF anything, we need the
humor now more than ever to lift people's spirits.

~~~
mcphage
But they weren’t that funny. They were mostly just annoying.

~~~
ProblemFactory
Launching GMail on April 1st was funny.

Nobody believed that 1GB of free email storage was real, back then ~10MB was
the norm.

~~~
__s
Similar good "not really fooling you":
[https://github.blog/2010-04-01-announcing-svn-
support](https://github.blog/2010-04-01-announcing-svn-support)

------
petilon
Sun Microsystems had much more elaborate jokes on April 1:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/business/worldbusiness/01...](https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/business/worldbusiness/01iht-
techfools.4.11593549.html)

------
anonymouswacker
Please, Google, cancel it for good.

------
vlod
You know every single year (well maybe not the first one where everyone
thought GMail was a prank 2004-04-01) I complained and moaned to everyone
within earshot. (That's a significant stretch)

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. ;)

------
rdiddly
Like many people here I'm straddling the two contradictory opinions that
Google's April Fool's schtick isn't funny, yet humor is how human beings cope
with crisis and those who would ask you to be serious and pious are making it
worse.

~~~
ken
I see no contradiction. Their AF 'jokes' _aren 't_ funny. Maybe if they were,
we wouldn't have so many people celebrating the cancellation.

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.

------
drusepth
Damn. I know a lot of people hate on April Fools jokes every year, but I was
really looking forward to this.

Fortunately, this is _exactly_ what someone who is planning a great April
Fools joke would say...

------
kingofpandora
I don't think it would have been in poor taste just because there's a
pandemic.

That being said, the demise of modern April Fool's jokes will not be something
I grieve.

------
lanevorockz
Do we hold so low standards of people? Are we so much better than everyone
else? What’s wrong with fun?

~~~
iamnothere
Didn't you hear? Fun was cancelled.

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.

~~~
dorkwood
Unfortunately I don't think it's possible for a corporation to be funny,
unless they're willing to hand over a large amount of power to a single funny
person (or a small team of funny people).

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.

~~~
iamnothere
Fair enough. Additionally, most large companies are probably too risk-averse
to greenlight true comedy. Comedy necessarily involves risk; risk of not
having your joke land, risk of offending, and so on. There's a good reason
that most comedians try out new material in small venues.

------
Jagat
Wise decision. It wouldn't have gone well with the Twitterati.

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.

------
ape4
I still won't trust anything on that day

------
gandalfian
I guess nobody is going to shout April Fools you can all come out of isolation
now? It was a faint hope.

------
lalos
Add it to the list of products/features killed by Google, how many more
Google!?

Happy April fools day!

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TLightful
Excellent news. Most inspired thing they've done in a decade.

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code_duck
I had a hard time differentiating between Google's jokes and the services they
offer for 12-24 months before cancelling them. Apparently so do they.

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ReptileMan
The whole year has been an April's Fool joke so whatever...

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throwawaynerdy
April fool's jokes, wasting people's time because "it's soooo funnie" ha. ha.
ha.

