
Google 'mic drop' Gmail joke for April Fools' day backfires - itg
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/gmail-google-mic-drop-april-fool-prank-undo-send-see-email-backfired-a6962916.html
======
huphtur
Annual reminder: the development effort spent adding an animated minion GIF to
Gmail could have kept Google Reader running all year

source:
[https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/715820699215138817](https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/715820699215138817)

~~~
Godel_unicode
Annual response: no it couldn't have.

[https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Google-cancel-Reader-rather-
th...](https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Google-cancel-Reader-rather-than-making-
it-a-paid-service)

~~~
JohnTHaller
Short version: Google couldn't keep Reader going because it would take money
to get it working on the new Google+ infrastructure that failed spectacularly.

Fun fact: Google+ also royally broke the Google contacts feature in Gmail and
it still hasn't quite recovered, meaning you can't really trust it when you
sync it to other things. I wound up with 2 or 3 duplicates of contacts, some
linked to Google+ profiles and some not, that sometimes had invisible
connections to each other. They wouldn't merge correctly. Sometimes when you
deleted one of them, more than one would disappear and you'd lose everything
that was in that contact. They appear to be trying to remedy with this with
the new Contacts web app that's in beta.

~~~
brorfred
It's worse than that- Google+ broke the basic syntax in google search. Adding
+ before a word used to make it mandatory. They change it to quotations marks
so they could have +username instead of @username for google plus. That still
bothers me and Google search doesn't work as well.

~~~
hobs
That is my single biggest complaint about G+, that they would have compromised
search for the biggest boondoggle google has ever created.

I would definitely say that implementing that was 100% when I saw that google
was done making good decisions and on the path towards making their core
product worse.

~~~
JBReefer
Every company has their time in the wilderness - MS just emerged from theirs,
Apple had theirs, and Google started theirs a while back.

They're usually caused by hubris, and learning humility, to not antagonize
your customers, and that you can make mistakes - like Microsoft seems to have
- usually fixes things.

~~~
hobs
Really good point, unfortunately I think one of the biggest reasons any big
company does get out of "the woods" is through competition starting to scare
them.

Its fairly obvious that google is not really afraid of any large competitor in
their space.

More than anything they are just buying up the next google (like msft did) to
ensure that nobody can come up from the depths.

~~~
cxseven
Except that it was likely investors pushing Google to come up with a response
to Facebook that caused them to create Google Plus, even though in the process
they had to kill several more vibrant social networks that had organically
grown around their existing products.

Desperate imitation of Apple caused additional problems.

------
touchofevil
Wow, what an incredibly, obviously bad idea. I spotted this last night and
immediately realized how this would go down. If you have 900 million users (as
gmail does) and you add a button right next to the send button that also has
the word "send" on it, you are going to have a significant numbers of users
send emails using that button! AND it adds a gif AND it archives the email
thread AND those features aren't explained when you hover over the button! I
have a feeling the vast majority of gmail users don't know how to find their
archived email threads, so those users will never see the replies to the email
they sent. The gmail team was asleep at the wheel on this one.

~~~
smt88
> _gmail team was asleep at the wheel on this one_

No. They intentionally drove off the road for fun and somehow didn't
understand humans enough to realize that it would be really infuriating to
some of their ~1 billion users.

They did the same thing with their "Call your Dad today" calendar reminder and
many other things. Google's product teams seem to be both deaf (help forums
overflowing with "+1s" for simple fixes) and tone-deaf.

This whole thing makes me realize I should just switch to Microsoft's
apps/ecosystem and retain my Gmail address. There's no reason to put up with
Google's terrible product decisions anymore.

~~~
gthtjtkt
It seems to be a combination of the Silicon Valley echo chamber + groupthink.
They're completely ignorant of any perspective that isn't their own.

It's the one thing I hate about Android. The UIs of Google apps have gotten
consistently _worse_ over the years, mainly because they've been prioritizing
aesthetics over functionality/ease of use.

I'm assuming their thought process is something along the lines of _" This is
obvious to me. Therefore, it will be obvious to the millions of Android
users"_. No, it's obvious to you because _you just thought of it_ , it's most
definitely _not_ obvious to everyone else.

~~~
dave2000
> It's the one thing I hate about Android. The UIs of Google > apps have
> gotten consistently worse over the years, mainly > because they've been
> prioritizing aesthetics over > functionality/ease of use.

Care to elaborate on this with a few examples? I have the opposite complaint.
They seem to be focussing on ease of use precisely at the expense of
functionality. I'd rather stuff was a little more complicated, because it
would give me more control over stuff. Note that I don't want it complicated
for the sake of complexity. But I've noticed a increase in "adding features
makes stuff complicated" and joke memes about "just make it an option". Well,
programming - proper programming - IS hard, but it's worth it because you get
a better product.

~~~
anonred
Also not Android, but Google has rendered the App Engine/Compute Engine
dashboard completely useless. Double overlapping sidebars and a huge amount of
wasted space everywhere makes simple tasks like finding a log entry difficult.
The old design at appengine.google.com which Google is slowly deprecating was
highly functional despite not being flat and "pretty." This is just one
example. It's my personal opinion that Google is showing a tremendous lack of
design ability in areas that they should be getting right at this point.

/rant

~~~
cxseven
Of all the Google things that doesn't need to imitate a spare Apple design,
it's APPENGINE

------
kzhahou
I feel like no one is addressing one of the biggest problems with these April
Fool's things: they're just not funny. PigeonRank might have been cute 10+
years ago, but now it's the same joke over and over.

You know how in your group of friends there's one or two who are just super
funny and make everyone laugh out loud? But then there's your other friend who
every once in a while cracks a joke and you just kinda smile a bit? Yeah,
that's who's putting together these pranks.

~~~
maxerickson
What do you mean by no one? I'd say more than half the people I pay any
attention to howl in pain all day long.

It's even been dubbed "Internet Jackass Day".

------
kstenerud
Wow... I was absolutely sure that this backfire story WAS the April Fools'
joke. It just seemed so farfetched. The animated gif I could understand, but
actually blocking all future replies? That's where I figured that nobody would
ever actually implement something so stupid and dangerous.

~~~
jug
Yes, it's the side effects and real world changes to outgoing mails that is
just beyond stupid and uncharacteristically bad even for Google April Fool's
jokes. I don't even understand how the mere idea could be approved. It's like
if they got an intern to "come up with something fun".

------
awesomerobot
Really an immature oversight not just in the tone, but in the actual
understanding of the product. It's a utility for most users.

What if AT&T just played a fart sound in the middle of a call if you hit a
button on your screen? Of course that would go wrong. How did they think this
was any different? They're not just some startup anymore.

~~~
gameshot911
>What if AT&T just played a fart sound in the middle of a call if you hit a
button on your screen?

That's actually hilarious.

~~~
yrro
Not in the context of all conversations!

~~~
tripzilch
I'll grant that in the middle of a phone conversation with a doctor about
flatulence, it'll just be neutral.

But otherwise, I got nothing.

And let me stop you before you reply "but what if it's terminal flatulence?"
because you just answered your own question.

~~~
yrro
Picture receiving a phone call from the police in which you learn that your
son and daughter had been killed in a vehicle collision.

While you are collecting your thoughts, perhaps before you fully realise that
your life has been changed forever, the silence is punctuated by a loud
_tphrrrphththpht_.

Hilarious.

------
gibbitz
Don't like ads? Didn't like this prank? Don't like it when the UI changes? Use
an email client. Like a boss.

~~~
criddell
What email client would you recommend? I've been stuck in Thunderbird because
I require PGP/GPG, but I really hate it. Do you have a favorite client? I
really do like Google's Inbox, but the lack of PGP is a blocker for me.

~~~
caminante
Do you actually "require" PGP, or is it just a preference?

I ask because as Bruce Schneier pointed out, his email security's only as good
as that of the people he messages. With so many people using gmail, outlook,
yahoo, etc., striving for total privacy is expensive.

Thus, I politely wonder whether you've set unrealistic expectations.

~~~
criddell
It's required by my employer. Almost all email I get is encrypted and/or
signed.

For services we have running that send email but don't know how to encrypt
(like Redmine and Jenkins), I wrote a little smtp proxy that all it does is
look at the from and to addresses, select appropriate keys, construct a new
encrypted email and forward it to the real smtp server. It's written in Python
and is super-simple but has worked for years now.

~~~
dcposch
That's really interesting. I care a lot about email encryption -- I want to
make something better and easier to use than current PGP programs. One major
hurdle is apathy. Talking to potential users, even if we could wave a magic
wand and make end-to-end encryption effortless, many people just don't care.

A few companies (and their associated governments) have vast central databases
containing most of the world's mail. At one point that would've been
considered dystopian, but today many people just take it for granted.

I've previously worked in financial technology, and even financial advisors
dealing with sensitive client info would always just use plain email.

\--

If you're comfortable telling me: what country and industry are you in?

Is it the norm to require PGP use on the job, or is your employer an
exception?

------
mxuribe
Not sure if this prank/feature appeared on google's "For Work" (paid
offering), but if it did, that would be sucky.

However on the free gmail side of things - not to be a jerk about this - but
perhaps this should remind users that they are not the real customers for
google...and that free platforms like this do in fact come with baggage. I'm
not saying google intentionally meant to screw over their users (I totally get
this was all meant in jest). But what incentive does google have other than
saying "Oops, sorry". Any expectations for compensation i think are silly; and
many users forget that. Does it suck that someone lost their job because of
this? Hellz yeah, no doubt about that! But can we really expect google to do
anything else except shut down this prank even if only after-the-fact? Again,
it sucks, but this should serve to show/remind some of those users that these
free platforms are not like your local electric/water utility, and should not
be fully depended upon, certainly not for such important things as jobs, etc.

~~~
dpina
It wasn't there, at least not by default. We use google for Work gmail and no
one in the company saw the button.

------
chintan
Verified - this is true and still working for me.

1\. You press "SEND+drop mic" button (note how close the buttons are:
[http://imgur.com/5gBZVOh](http://imgur.com/5gBZVOh) )

2\. It says message sent and archived:
[http://imgur.com/GpOhiLY](http://imgur.com/GpOhiLY)

3\. Go to other recipient email, it contains attachment of mic drop image.
[http://imgur.com/Bs0iISe](http://imgur.com/Bs0iISe)

4\. Reply and it doesn't show up in inbox because conversation was archived
(only accessible from "All Mail")

~~~
muraiki
As a colorblind user I'm not quite sure what color the send+mic button is, but
I'm drawn to it much more strongly than the normal send button. At the very
least you'd think they would have had a pop-up confirmation message...

~~~
vectorjohn
As a person who reads and is mindful of what I click, I click the button that
says what I want it to do.

~~~
nommm-nommm
Except they both say send. The stupid icon on the other one looks like a
maraca. I would have never guessed "mic drop." Let's ignore that "mic drop" is
a cultural expression that someone who grew up in a different country may not
be familiar with. To be honest it look like a "send and play music" button to
me.

~~~
eecsninja
Not just you. I've lived in the USA since I was a young lad and work for
Google. I had never heard of 'mic drop' until this prank.

Then again, I don't watch TV so maybe I missed out on it being used.

~~~
nommm-nommm
I grew up in the Northeast US. I only heard the expression be used in the last
year or so. I'm not even sure what it means. I do watch TV.

------
mxuribe
Just to think how much control google (or any other operator of free
platform/service) has over the content of any messages pumped through their
platform: Instead of google inserting that minion GIF, what if they simply
added "...Not" to the end of every email?

Fictional example #1: Hi everyone, We're having a baby!...Not (Then google
appends "...Not" to the end.)

Fictional example #2: Hi everyone, Grandma passed away...Not

Fictional example #3: Hi everyone, We're moving away to city/state/country
XYZ!...Not

Fictional example #4: Hi everyone, We're getting a divorce!...Not

Encrypted messaging or not, that's a lot of control to have (by a provider)
over what users send out. Or maybe i'm thinking too pessimistically?

~~~
donatj
I really hope if your grandma passes away you get a phone call. Maybe I am old
fashioned.

~~~
akgerber
I was one of around 30 grandchildren of my grandma's 12 children. I heard
about her death via email— it would have been impractical to share the news
otherwise, or to ask her caretakers to make 50 or even 12 calls while dealing
with all the exigencies of the funeral.

~~~
donatj
Calling trees. That's the way we did it years ago.

~~~
bronson
I'd rather receive an email from the source than a call from someone who heard
from someone who heard from someone that grandma is probably dead.

And they take a ton of work to organize.

~~~
nommm-nommm
Friend/Family calling trees take no effort to organize and happen organically.
You mostly just call the people who you are closest to and the others do the
same with a few people making sure so and so who isn't close to anyone gets
the word. I have an absolutely gigantic family on both sides (50 or so cousins
total) and this had always been the way it operated on both sides of the
family and there was never any advanced planning.

In fact when the news is very distressing (spouse death) the person usually
only notifies one or two very close people. Those people make sure the word
gets out.

------
ff10
If somebody told me it's meta April fools day this year I would believe it.

------
yoz-y
I really do not like what Google did here.

If anything, they have introduced unnecessary code to an already complex
application that people actually use. More code means more bugs. They should
take Microsofts 'no more easter eggs' approach and stop dicking around.

~~~
fixermark
Writing software is the company's function. "More code means more bugs"
implies there is no opportunity or freedom for improvement.

(Also, Microsoft took a 'no more easter eggs' approach? Wow, I didn't know.
That's.... Well, if I want to go program somewhere with no personal freedom or
trust from management, I know where I can go!).

~~~
yoz-y
> "More code means more bugs" implies there is no opportunity or freedom for
> improvement.

This twists a bit the meaning of what I have said. This particular feature is
made to be throw-away and is useless. Programmers should strive to make their
code as simple as possible while keeping all of the _necessary_ features of
the software. This feature was not necessary.

As for the Microsoft policy here is the source:
[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/larryosterman/2005/10/21/wh...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/larryosterman/2005/10/21/why-
no-easter-eggs/)

Personally I would hope that the programmers' personal freedom is not
expressed in easter eggs in mission critical software

------
felipeerias
Google sabotaging their own product just for a few laughs is a great way of
reminding people that they don't really care about providing any services
other than selling ads.

Also, what's the point of this prank when Gmail has a global audience? Only a
minority of users will be aware that their tools might fail today because it's
April Fools in the US.

~~~
SilkRoadie
Looks to me like there was a disconnect between what marketing wanted and what
was delivered. Marketing saw this idea as a bit of fun, something that would
create some good press and be playful.

Unfortunately the implementation was terrible, it confused users and lead
people trying to seriously use the product to send silly pictures around.

Saying they don't care about the product because of this is silly. So many
people use it because it is one of the best email applications around. A
botched bit of fun doesn't mean the product is going to shit.

------
raverbashing
Typical Google. Sending UX down the drain in a whim

Apparently none of their "interviewed to death" workers noticed the potential
ways this could backfire

~~~
reitanqild
> Typical Google. Sending UX down the drain in a whim

While doesn't seem like their brightest idea I still miss the old whimsy
Google.

> Apparently none of their "interviewed to death" workers noticed the
> potential ways this could backfire

This is IMO the really interesting part but I guess there is a strong
groupthink culture there.

~~~
awesomerobot
I think the old whimsy Google would think adding a minion gif to emails was a
completely lazy and boring idea.

~~~
alanh
Yeah. Making Google Maps for the moon (with cheese at the maximum zoom level)
was a combination of interesting and funny _in a way that wasn’t absolutely
contemptuous of the user_

------
byset
I think the worst thing about this is that once you hit the button, you
wouldn't get any more replies from that thread. Is this really how it worked —
that Gmail essentially shut you out of subsequent replies to the conversation
in a non-undoable way? (Edit: Maybe you could revive the ability to get
replies by un-archiving the thread? Does anybody know?) It just makes
explaining yourself in the event of a mistake (and even viewing the fallout)
that much harder.

It also looks like they put the button where "Send" would normally go.
Mistakes seem inevitable; this is pretty mind-boggling.

~~~
mwnivek
This uses an existing feature called "muting" a conversation, and yes they can
be un-muted. See
[https://support.google.com/mail/answer/47787?hl=en](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/47787?hl=en)

~~~
sbarre
I would bet real money that a proper survey would show that 95% of Gmail users
don't know about that feature, let alone understand how to use it or undo it.

Note I am not disagreeing with you, just adding to the point that this was a
super-bad idea.

------
loudmax
I think the lesson here isn't so much about April Fools as it is about user
interface design. Google put an orange warning on the button to let users know
that the button would do something different, and people _still_ clicked it
out of habit. We users simply don't expect that buttons will suddenly change
functionality. Google felt that the warnings they had in place were
sufficient. Clearly they weren't.

~~~
tmptmp
What if tomorrow some fools at Google think it is okay to play April fools
prank with their automated cars? or their robots? and the car/robot goes
berserk due to that?

This type of foolish pranks should backfire more strikingly. If they cannot
treat their main (or at least one of the very important) business seriously,
then they may face some very unpleasant things later.

~~~
Dylan16807
What if tomorrow some engineers at Google think it is okay to do a normal
update to their automated cars? or their robots? and the car/robot goes
berserk due to that?

~~~
tmptmp
I did not say that this is impossible. It seems you are confused between
accidental bugs and deliberate pranks. So, to address your issue: 1) it would
not be unreasonable to expect that the "normal update" to their cars/robots
should have passed some serious and rigorous testing/verification and the
business/physical impact on end-user experience must have been assessed before
rolling the "normal" updates; 2) and a serious business entity will not allow
any such deliberate/damaging prank to slip through such a process.

~~~
Dylan16807
> 1) it would not be unreasonable to expect that the "normal update" to their
> cars/robots should have passed some serious and rigorous
> testing/verification and the business/physical impact on end-user experience
> must have been assessed before rolling the "normal" updates;

So your point here is that safety-critical updates need to be rigorously
tested? I agree with that, but I don't see any connection to whether it's okay
to have pranks. I'm not confusing bugs and pranks, my entire point is that
they're quite separate. Your bug risk is there with or without pranks. So if
you feel like adding a prank, go ahead, just subject it to the same safety
testing. That they released a UI update that annoys people does not imply
anything about their ability to do safety testing.

> 2) and a serious business entity will not allow any such deliberate/damaging
> prank to slip through such a process.

I'll split "deliberate/damaging" into multiple cases.

Deliberate pranks: those are deliberate, they don't "slip through".

Safety-related damages: these are important, and not what happened here.

Non-safety-related damages: this getting through does not imply they have bad
safey testing, so the comment about cars/robots going berserk is a non-
sequitur.

~~~
tmptmp
>>Safety-related damages: these are important, and not what happened here.

Please define safety.

People lost their jobs due to this irresponsible prank. People might have
missed replies from their doctors due to such foolishness. If now Google says
that that's according to their "terms and conditions" then well, it clearly
shows that Google is unreliable.

~~~
Dylan16807
'Safety' being the kind of worry you were trying to project when you mentioned
cars and robots going berserk.

~~~
tmptmp
That's your notion of safety. For me (and I am sure for many others too) it
means a product that is critical to my my workflow and the one on which my
financial, health and other such critical aspects of life depend, if such a
product (here Gmail) goes berserk due to some foolish prank played by the
company then the company (here Google) is irresponsible and unreliable. Cars
and robots present only some kinds of safety problems, not all.

~~~
Dylan16807
If you weren't making any distinction then I don't understand why you brought
up cars/robots going berserk in the first place.

(Or do you make a distinction, but you would call it something different? Then
just say that, and I'll use the term you want. My contention has nothing to do
with word choice. Nobody wins an argument about word choice.)

~~~
tmptmp
>>If you weren't making any distinction then I don't understand why you
brought up cars/robots going berserk in the first place.

I brought up the issue mainly for these reasons: a) safety issues in
cars/robots are more obvious; b) if google can do this (such harmful pranks)
with email, then they can do such (harmful) pranks with their other products
too, including cars/robots. I wanted to bring out these issues on the
discussion.

------
mbrownnyc
Maybe the Gmail team should realize we're all not children.

~~~
whack
First off, yes, Google messed up here. They even acknowledged it themselves
and took it down asap once they realized it.

But second, people need to cut Google a little slack here. We all make
mistakes, or errors in judgement, and Google is no different. Do we really
want to live in a world where companies are afraid to innovate and try
anything new, because people are going to jump on their backs if things don't
work out? Part of the reason why Google was able to create so many great
products, like Maps, Mail and so on, is because they've created an environment
that's very conducive to creativity and experimentation.

As a consumer, I love the fact that Google has given me so many awesome
productivity tools, with great features, completely for free, and I don't want
them to ever lose the creative/experimental culture that made it possible. If
you're not a fan of such a culture, if you just want a no-nonsense humorless
stable suit-driven product, well, Microsoft has you well covered.

~~~
mizzao
Microsoft is actually trying out all sorts of stuff lately. Ubuntu for
Windows? VS Code? OSS, cross-platform build tools? Lots of interesting things.

~~~
fixermark
Racist chatbot AIs! ;)

------
kzhahou
Fun side effect of long-running AJAX apps: even though Google disabled the
feature, it will still be live for everyone who has a gmail window since (at
least) yesterday. The feature must have had a timed activation.

You have to refresh the page. And apparently even that may not be enough. I
Ctrl-R refreshed in Firefox and still saw the button (aggressive caching?). I
closed the tab and loaded gmail in a new tab, and finally button went away.

~~~
nommm-nommm
I still have the button too! Refreshed and it didn't go away. I assume I have
to log out to actually remove it. I'm not sure how long this tab has been open
for.

------
jetcata
I sent an accidental mic drop email as a response to an important conversation
I was having regarding my career. Thanks a lot google.

~~~
raisedbyninjas
Send a follow-up email with a brief explanation and a link to this article. If
your employer/benefactor/whatever still insists on feeling slighted then you
may want to reconsider if you want business relationship with them.

~~~
ProAm
Impressions can go a long ways. What if you were emailing you exwife's lawyer
or judge? Potential new customer that may save your business? Email is a
critical communication tool of the modern day, it was ill conceived and
clearly not thought out on Google's behalf.

------
akerro
>Everyone will get your message, but that's the last you'll ever hear about
it. Yes, even if folks try to respond, you won't see it."

Soo... they again purposely broke the whole idea behind email?

~~~
on_and_off
they replaced the reply & archive button. I might be mistaken since I don't
use it, but it sounds like its normal behavior.

~~~
detaro
No, it isn't. the button only moves the thread to the archive, hiding it from
the inbox until another mail belonging to it arrives.

~~~
cbhl
It also mutes the conversation, which suppresses replies from showing up in
Inbox.

~~~
detaro
The normal "reply and archive" button?

~~~
cbhl
The mic drop button mutes, whereas send and archive does not. Therefore the
behavior of mic drop is not "normal".

~~~
detaro
That's what I said/tried to say. Not very clearly though, it seems.

------
qq66
I saw this last night while on a call with a friend. I emailed him and asked
him to reply and saw that I didn't get the reply, and we both agreed that this
was a spectacularly bad idea. About an hour later I saw my wife hovering over
the mic drop button and warned her that she probably didn't want to use it. I
love that Google's brand is fun and whimsical, but there are some things that
are not OK for such a critical service. It's like if the electric company sent
a signal down the wire on July 4th to make every AC motor start humming the
national anthem.

------
snackular
please make this an actual feature in labs. lose the gif and have it send an
auto reply to all future responses indicating I am no longer reading the email
thread. in the auto-reply have a link leading to how to use bcc

------
slg
This makes me wonder what the process is for these "jokes". Has anyone here
been involved in an April Fools day joke that was as visible as this or on as
important a product as Gmail? Where does the idea originate? How many people
are involved in its approval? How much time and attention is paid to it? I
think the answers to these type of questions would be pretty interesting.

We need an April Fools day postmortem.

~~~
Gustomaximus
I was the push behind Opera Softwares 'Face Gestures' April fool. This was
concise over a lunch time chat, vetted by my manager and went to production (I
would link the video but struggling to copy/paste). I felt it was amusing and
some might believe it at the beginning but 99% of people would realise it's a
joke by the end of the video. The response was good. It was fun for us to make
something different and gave our users a laugh and got a bit of press for the
brand. I think this is the goal more than actually fooling large numbers of
people. Some harmless fun so to say.

That said over the years we had a few people asking about this feature as a
serious option...

------
mnglkhn2
I think this is the actual April Fools' prank: the story about the failed
prank. Nobody sane will approve a product feature such as this.

~~~
gdulli
You could say the same thing about the last redesigns to gmail and maps, but
those were real too.

~~~
mnglkhn2
Weird thing to say, considering that this "feature" goes to alter the
conversation. No matter what the UI changes other, the primary tenet is to not
alter and obfuscate the conversation. So, from this point of view, they
actually messed with the core feature of the app: sending and receiving
emails/messages, without alteration to the message.

------
insulanian
I think this article itself is an April fools joke.

~~~
Tenhundfeld
I thought so too, at first, but it's getting a lot of seemingly-real coverage.

[http://time.com/4278950/april-fools-gmail-mic-
drop/](http://time.com/4278950/april-fools-gmail-mic-drop/)

[http://fortune.com/2016/04/01/google-mic-
drop/](http://fortune.com/2016/04/01/google-mic-drop/)

[http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/1/11344044/google-gmail-
mic-d...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/1/11344044/google-gmail-mic-drop-
button-april-fool)

Now, they could be in on the joke and/or all just picking up the original
story and parroting it without any fact checking. I'm still hoping the real
prank here was getting the media to cover a fake prank, but I'm becoming less
sure of my instincts.

~~~
bmj
It's also worth noting that I saw the button in my GMail interface early this
morning (as well as the little pop-up explaining it), and now, a few hours
later, that button is gone, and it is still very much 1 April. I would think
if the backlash was just part of the joke, the button would still be there.

~~~
Tenhundfeld
Yeah, okay, that sounds pretty conclusive. When I replied, I hadn't yet seen a
non-jokey-sounding report of a real person saying they'd experienced it. That
sucks – both because the apparent negative impact on real people's lives and
because I was really hoping it was an elaborate prank on the media.

------
thrillgore
I believe we have all witnessed the end of April Fools Day jokes at Google.

~~~
tomjen3
I sincerely hope so. Every single company has to be April Fools and they are
never cute or funny. Worst. Holiday. Ever.

------
protomyth
If your brogrammer idea means some poor sysadmin is going to get a bunch of
panicked questions, then don't do the damn joke.

~~~
bluthru
Somehow I don't think Minions appeal to brogrammers.

~~~
protomyth
Its one of the most popular mic drop gifs, so it was probably easy to get.

------
atwebb
The two autoplaying ads on the site may be worse than the mic-drop feature.

I definitely got a layover notice telling me about it last night around 8PM
CST.

>to a bug, the Mic Drop feature inadvertently caused more headaches than
laughs. We’re truly sorry. The feature has been turned off.

I did enjoy the it's a feature/bug dual language though.

~~~
coldpie
> The two autoplaying ads on the site may be worse than the mic-drop feature.

There is a fix available for this issue:

[https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#installation](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#installation)

------
adrianlmm
"Google is bringing back Google Reader", that would be a better April Fool's
joke.

------
CoinX4
Congratulations Google, you played yourself.

------
rurban
I thought when reading about that "Drop the mic" joke, that gmail will
temporarily drop recording from the users microphone, and will not send the
audio to google, so they won't be able to listen what is spoken in that room.
I thought that's a neat feature, unfortunately only temporary.

Romanian government used that tactic for some years on all old cable phones,
until google brought that feature to the masses with the new smartphone and
laptop technology.

------
gboudrias
Does every single service of every single company need to have an April Fools'
joke? The internet is incredibly obnoxious on April 1sts nowadays.

~~~
jsutton
Some people enjoy fun traditions.

------
746F7475
If your "professional relationship" is "destroyed" by something like this then
it wasn't a real relationship anyway

~~~
hypertexthero
Agreed — If someone fires you because of this do you really want to be working
for them?

I think it was a great, if risky, marketing move — people all over the
internet are talking about Gmail today.

Sure, some may have had a bit of trouble, but the Gmail team apologized
publicly, thus providing a finger-pointing target for stressed office workers.

~~~
hypertexthero
An addendum to my comment above: Three days later I have now also been bitten
by Google's April Fool's feature/bug!

Today I received an email from someone asking why I was not replying to the
other email thread started on April 1st. The person had clicked the 'drop the
mic' button, and was not seeing any further replies to that thread. Not good!

------
jasonkostempski
Are we sure these stories aren't the actual joke? Did anyone here actually see
this feature in person?

~~~
dgacmu
Yup.
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/28xcoithtls9wo5/Screenshot%202016-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/28xcoithtls9wo5/Screenshot%202016-04-01%2007.52.35.png?dl=0)
(I thought it was kind of funny, FWIW, particularly when it hit a mailing
list. :)

------
nunez
Well, there goes Google's cute April Fool's jokes from here on out.

------
vaibhavkul
Did anyone take a screenshot of the Mic Drop button before it was removed?
There are GIFs showing the sent email with the minion, but could find any
showing the /button/ in action.

~~~
tyingq
[http://i.imgur.com/5gBZVOh.png](http://i.imgur.com/5gBZVOh.png)

Seems obvious this was a bad idea.

Edit: Google's animated gif showing the whole UI:
[https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GYnAKaZY9v4/Vv2RkU5hIcI/AAAAAAAAB...](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GYnAKaZY9v4/Vv2RkU5hIcI/AAAAAAAAB4w/78RP9KC9uZYL8c93kWtkZV50yfGH1gipg/s1600/Gmail%2BMic%2BDrop_Send.gif)

I would guess they missed the idea that people use muscle memory to close
irritating pop-ups without trying to figure out why it's there, or what it
relates to. They are then left with 2 send buttons, one with a now ambiguous
microphone icon.

~~~
fixermark
It would be cool if people took this as a lesson to not close dialogs without
reading them.

That's, of course, not what's going to happen.

~~~
tyingq
Unfortunately, the popup Google chose to use looks like an advertisement. The
red "new" banner and animated gif.

They might have reacted differently to an actual dialog at first click that
says "This will inject an image into your outbound email, and mute the
conversation. Continue?" (with the default choice set to "NO".

------
grimmdude
I wish I would have saw this feature before it was taken down so I would have
a better understanding of why people were accidentally clicking it.

------
gdulli
From now on when you want to illustrate the difference between "knowing
things" and "wisdom" just link here.

------
hobarrera
I'm just gonna leave these here...

[https://www.fastmail.com](https://www.fastmail.com)

------
deadcast
Fools day in April sucks. I haven't even got mic dropped yet ;_;

------
exodust
So in other words the prank worked.

April Fools day never claimed not to be devious.

------
Rudism
Did the button actually operate as advertised? It wouldn't surprise me if it
did nothing, and the real April fools joke were planted fake outrage "I got
fired over this!" tweets.

~~~
mcphage
It inserted an animation of a minion dropping a mic into your email. You can
see it in screen grabs.

------
stared
I though that it was a really well done metaprank.

------
bryanrasmussen
I'm not seeing this in my UI, is it an independent april fool's joke here? ah
I see it's supposedly been taken down, now I don't know if it actually ever
existed.

~~~
deadcast
I'm starting to wonder if the whole thing was just faked. That would be good.

------
digitalneal
Ya just don't mess with peoples email.

------
an4rchy
I honestly thought this was an April fools article from the newspaper and the
links would never lead back to Google.

Would be crazy if it was another level deep of April Fools.

------
brickmort
what a terrible idea for a prank. I can't believe this made it through all
channels and got the OK.

------
S7012MY
I think people should learn to read instructions and to search for
explanations when they don't know something

------
leojg
People lack sense of humor :S

------
pmlnr
hint: Thunderbird, K9, Roundcube and Rainloop.

------
deanCommie
"Well, it looks like we pranked ourselves this year. Due to a bug, the Mic
Drop feature inadvertently caused more headaches than laughs."

It wasn't a bug it was a feature. Maybe I'm too much of an engineer but I HATE
when PM's/managers/PR representatives just classify all unexpected and
undesired behaviour as "bugs". A "bug" implies I made a mistake. I didn't make
a mistake. I developed EXACTLY what you told me, after numerous rounds of
confirmation and feedback loops. It's not a bug if it's doing exactly what it
was supposed to.

~~~
voiper1
In the pop-out compose, it _replaced_ the send&archive. In the regular
compose/reply/forward, it added another button to the side. I'm thinking the
"bug" is that in the pop-out, it replaced the send&archive, so people
_inadvertently_ clicked it out of muscle memory.

~~~
Mithaldu
Nah, the bug is that it actually triggered on the normal send button as well,
for some people.

[https://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/715770400555315202](https://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/715770400555315202)

~~~
Robadob
The actual bug was apparently a little more nuanced than 'for some people'. If
you tried the mic drop button in an empty email, it would fail to send. If you
then used that same email draft and sent it regularly, the effect would still
apply.

[https://twitter.com/cabel/status/715769273545785344](https://twitter.com/cabel/status/715769273545785344)

~~~
JonnieCache
That is brutal.

I guess this kind of thing is why we no longer have flight simulators in our
spreadsheets and so forth.

~~~
nsedlet
For fun, on our site one of the developers made it so that if you entered the
Konami code, every image would be replaced by random cat pictures. This was
immediately ripped out of prod a few weeks later when a client asked why there
were a bunch of cat photos in their dashboard. Still no idea how they
triggered it.

We all felt very stupid and unprofessional.

~~~
heynk
I once did this on an internal app, we had a hotkeys library installed, so I
added the GTA cheats to raise and lower your wanted level. It just added a
temporary notice in the top right of your screen, nothing major. Turns out
that if you mashed the keyboard, the library didn't properly handle 6+
character combinations, and would fire the callback anyways.

------
obj-g
Wow, what a bunch of babies. I'm sorry, I just don't see how sending a "mic
drop" email could ruin so many lives in just a few hours. It's not like it
sent some NSFW gif or random insults or something. Accidentally sent one? Just
send a new email to the person with a link to an article about it and say,
oops, I got pranked, sorry?

~~~
mbil
I agree completely. The prank may not have been funny, but are we so tightly
wound that this upsets us?

~~~
scrollaway
Jesus, have some empathy.

This doesn't upset _me_. This doesn't upset _you_. This doesn't upset hundreds
of thousands of people and as unfunny as this is, I'm sure many are laughing
about it.

However, it _can_ upset _some_ people. Some people who would mistakenly click
the button because, god forbid, they forgot not to use the internet at all on
April 1st, and that mistake would appear in an extremely important
conversation.

And that mistake would appear during career discussions. And that mistake
would get someone not hired, or fired, or whatever.

You guys want to complain, talk about how they should "look harder", how they
should "take responsibility" and "own up to their mistakes", how they should
"be happy not to work somewhere people are so uptight"? _Have some fucking
empathy_.

I'd wager the majority of HN is well off, or well off enough that they don't
have to worry about the rent or their water bill. But I'd like to see some of
the people here struggling to make ends meet. Maybe you won't be so
sociopathic about the potential for serious harm.

This thread makes me sick.

~~~
mbil
But you _are_ upset at the _idea_ of people potentially being upset by it.
This thread makes you sick. Are you suggesting it's classist to observe the
prank as harmless?

I understand where you're coming from, and I understand how someone may have
clicked it by accident. I am struggling to empathize with the recipient who
would see this, and a follow-up email explaining it was a mistake, and let
that affect them.

~~~
scrollaway
The prank doesn't upset me. Where did I suggest that the _thread_ doesn't
upset me? Damn right the thread upsets me. People are downvoting left and
right those that dare to suggest jobs are not a commodity you can just throw
away and replace a week later. _Not for everyone_.

And no, there's no classism at play. It's purely and simply a lack of empathy.
A lack of understanding of what it's like to be in a situation where losing
your job may cost you your home, your children or even your life.

> I am struggling to empathize with the recipient who would see this

Then don't empathize with the recipient. Plenty of bosses are jerks. But
empathize with the _sender_ , who would lose a job they cared about and can't
necessarily get a new one like they grow on trees.

------
wanda
[insensitive/ignorant comment withdrawn]

~~~
brandmeyer
> more people use GMail professionally

I think email is /primarily/ used as a professional communication tool today.
Casual and personal uses of email have been largely replaced by social media.

------
zkhalique
Is this an April Fools joke itself?

------
pmontra
Was it real or it's a meta joke?

~~~
millzlane
The people want to know! We don't have time for this.

------
gumby
"Please return all your mail to Google for a full refund."

It's a free product...you got what you paid for!

~~~
mcphage
I don't know if it also showed up for Google for Domains / Google Business /
whatever they're calling it now, but there are people who pay for Gmail.

------
whitehat2k9
I love how so many people are butthurt about this. Google owes you nothing.
They are a business and you are their customer using their product for free.
If you don't like it, GTFO.

~~~
qb45
Some businesses pay for it, actually.

I don't know if they also received this feature.

~~~
whitehat2k9
The widespread consensus is they didn't, so that's an irrelevant point.

------
gotrythis
I think this article is a joke, making it a really good April fools joke. This
is a real Google style April fools joke:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSZPNwZex9s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSZPNwZex9s)

------
throw_away131
Stuff like this makes me consider less about ever applying to Google. idk,
they've got smart people at their company, but there seems to be an underlying
disconnect with real everyday users. I think autistic would be too harsh to
describe their collective mindset...

~~~
jhall1468
Collectively autistic?

Their real everyday users amount in the millions. But please give us more
insight using highly inappropriate analogies.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
They have real every day users, but Google doesn't understand those users.
Many Googlers eat at Google, play at Google, and _most of their friends are
other Googlers_.

You'll notice Google has almost no comprehension of real people's lives.
Google designers have never had to do work on a 1024x768 screen at the office.

Googlers live in a bubble where technology is perfect, which is why they seem
to believe technology can solve a lot of human issues much easier than they
actually can. For them, it's possible.

~~~
xbmcuser
Google understands users better than you think. They mine millions of
interactions to see what people are doing so understand what is liked and not
liked. This prank was not a data driven so back fired.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Google has automated this process. They don't do nearly enough actual
interaction with actual users about problems. This is actually an example of
what I'm talking about. Where they assume an automated data collector is more
valuable than even just sitting down with one person and watching them use the
website.

~~~
ryanobjc
So look, I literally can't even right about now.

The UX researchers here at Google DO in fact sit down with many people and
watch them use all sorts of parts of google, gmail, etc. In fact they go out
of their way to run usability studies in various parts of the countries,
because, you know, selection bias.

Also automated data is collected.

The real problem here is, if you have X million users, can you really know
them as a unified set of people? Of course not.

Sure this prank backfired, but hey, have some compassion for the people who
worked on it. They were trying to be funny, and trying to bring a little light
to people's life. There was no intention of ruining anyone's day.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I am opted into their user studies group. I haven't seen a new invitation in a
couple of years now. And the way they handle user studies, opt in via Google
Form, they still see a particularly biased community: Hardcore Google users,
most likely technical in nature.

If Google went to a senior citizens' home, and watched how some of their less
technically inclined users used their products, I'm confident Google would
fire everyone with the word "designer" in their title and start over.

But this is largely immaterial to this particular joke. The joke was funny.
The choice to implement it for real was not.

~~~
ryanobjc
So, what you're saying is, from your limited view point, you have a conclusive
overview of all of UX? Also, Google designers are intensely incompetent and
deserve to be fired?

I dunno, you sure are quick to judge a very difficult subject area.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Google designers ARE intensely incompetent. And design's a pretty simple
subject area. The problem is, designers need to justify their continued jobs,
after a product is launched. So there's a constant set of increasingly more
complicated overengineering projects to "redesign" things to stay "trendy".
Generally sacrificing usability in exchange.

Ever since Google hired their "VP of Design", their products have heavily
shifted away from being functionally useful.

There's a reason Gmail is the last bastion of competent design at Google.
There's a reason that even Googlers said they wouldn't use Gmail if Inbox
became the "new Gmail", and this is probably where this conversation rounds
back to this prank:

You don't %$@# with email.

~~~
jhall1468
What does constitute good design? Does this:

[http://www.ocdtrekkie.com/](http://www.ocdtrekkie.com/)

Because if _that_ is "functionally useful" then I will happily continue using
trendy. The thing with design is that it _is not_ a simple subject area. You
are constantly balancing several (somtimes mutually exclusive) objectives.

At the end of the day, blame end-users. They use the products that are
"trendy" and look nice. They dictate good design.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
My not really updated portfolio page isn't really intended to be 'useful',
lol. Though the navigation is much clearer than many websites today, and the
pages load on pretty much any device nearly instantaneously.

~~~
jhall1468
You highlight my exact point: To you design is purely functional. To the
overwhelming majority of people it isn't. That's the reason Google's Design
initiative (Material Design) was started in the first place. Good design
practices across all Google Services.

You want bad design, try most of the AWS tools. You can have both
functionality and appeal. Pretending they are mutually exclusive is silly.

------
donatj
Let's just say for the sake of argument that this were a serious new feature
and not an April 1 joke. Like a fast reply or something that could cause
similar outcomes.

Are they allowed to rearrange the buttons then? Or should they never change
the UI in fear that users might bump the wrong button due to muscle memory.

------
reboog711
If I try some time-math:

The article posted to a UK site with a byline that says "Posted 43 minutes
ago". At the time of writing this comment; 43 minutes was ~2pm in the UK, give
or take a few minutes.

The article also has an update on 11:50. That update either came ~2 hours
before the article was posted, or 8-9 hours in the future.

So, I'm going to guess the whole article is fake.

~~~
Ntrails
>So, I'm going to guess the whole article is fake.

Honestly this is the best April Fools I've seen on the internet in years
because I've no idea whether the mic drop feature existed or not. The
uncertainty in whether it's real owns

~~~
David
The mic drop feature did exist; I had the pleasure of actively not clicking it
on an email I sent last night.

~~~
Ntrails
I'd like to believe you, but how can I trust anything I read on the internet
today?

------
littletinman
Anyone else thought about the fact that now that they have removed this
feature, they have put the "job death" sentence on those that accidentally
used it and would have had a reasonable explanation to their boss?

"Look, this button is right here and I thought it was send." Now a non-
technical boss will just assume that person is lying because no button is in
gmail anymore. Thanks Google. Stay Classy.

~~~
hudell
Well, there's plenty of references to this on the internet already.

------
jsrjenkins
I was wondering if this would have some serious legal repercussions for
Google.

In the US I believe normal mail cannot be substantially modified in transit,
and that this is a Federal offense. For instance for a postal worker to open
letters and insert cartoons because it was April Fool's day he would not only
lose his job but also be subject to prosecution.

Certainly an email server is in some way exempt as it is possible for software
to add headers to an email, but if the server modifies the message and the
manner of communication substantially, there might be serious legal
ramifications to this practical joke of Google. Especially since this joke
impeded the response in a way similar to scratching out the return address of
a postal letter.

The very fact that Google thought it worthwhile to do such a thing with
personal communication absolutely boggles the mind. Any responsible
organization would be insane put their email on their servers after such a
stunt.

~~~
swalsh
Just because it has mail in the name doesn't in anyway imply it falls under
the same jurisdiction of our federal mail system.

~~~
jsrjenkins
This is more a sign of the sluggishness of the legal system to follow the
reality. More people use email now than regular mail, even for official
things. Most companies even accept a pdf of a signed contract as an attachment
these days.

The thing is though, if email was treated in a way similar to Federal mail,
the whole debate about encryption and due process could be handled by laws
that already protect privacy. For some strange reason, because it uses a
computer, we lose many fundmental rights that we already had with Federal
mail. In a certain way email is a service so fundamental to society now, that
it becomes a necessary utility - so many things can't be done without an email
address today.

------
M4v3R
<obligatory rant about April Fools day>

April Fools is such a collective waste of time. Not only does it lower
productivity of many people for a day, some "pranks" actually take days to
prepare. I imagine that producing SnoopaVision for Youtube [1] wasn't exactly
cheap.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/snoopavision](https://www.youtube.com/snoopavision)

~~~
underyx
Yes, just like Christmas, New Years' Eve, and the rest.

------
15charlimit
TL;DR "people are careless and stupid, use a new feature on important messages
without checking to see what it does first, then whine about it when they get
burned"

The modern world is pathetic.

~~~
cytzol
It's important to avoid the thought-terminating cliche "Oh, it was just human
error" and look at the problems in the UI that cause the errors in the first
place. If the ignition in your car was one day replaced by an ejector seat,
and you hit it without thinking because that's what you do every day, I doubt
you'd be placing the blame on yourself.

~~~
15charlimit
Given that a car is a dangerous piece of machinery that could quite easily
kill myself and people around me if it malfunctions, yes I do give it a once-
over every time I get into it throughout the day, which includes the interior
controls.

Getting back on topic, given historical data, it's foolish to not expect
something to happen/change on April 1st, especially on google products.

So yes, I place the blame on the users.

~~~
random_rr
@ShitHNSays

