Every year on this day, the Internet is flooded with nonsense, fake news stories, and other dumb stuff. The tech industry is probably more notorious for this than any other. Within that industry, nobody releases more jokes than Google, though to the company’s credit, it has put a lot more thought into this stuff than anyone else over the years.
So let the obligatory annual Google April Fools’ round-up commence.
First off, you can use backwards Google if you go to http://com.google.
It’s a bit headache-inducing.
We already told you about the Google Maps Pac-Man game.
This is playable on desktop, iOS, and Android. More here.
Google Japan shared a Google Panda product launch:
Matt Cutts even makes an appearance in that one if you have the patience to sit through the first four minutes. He’s still on leave (unless that’s a prank too).
Also out of Google Japan, the keyless keyboard:
Google Fiber introduced Dial-up mode.
“By incorporating dial-up technology, we were able to reduce Fiber speeds up to 376 times by withholding photons from the fiber strands,” Google explains. “In doing so, the light-based fiber optic technology dims to a flicker of its previous capacity, giving our users those precious moments to load the dishwasher, hug the kids or walk the dog.”
Chrome has #ChromeSelfie, which lets you take a seflie while looking at content on the web.
“If you’re a selfie fanatic like me you’ve probably sent a lot of selfies in reaction to articles in the past, but it takes a lot of time and hassle to exit Chrome, open the camera and snap a pic,” says product manager AbdelKarim Mardini. “In fact, with so much of our time spent browsing online, most Chrome users lose up to 6 hours of selfie-taking time every day! And we think it’s a tragedy that your reactions, as well as luscious lashes and beautiful brows, are going uncaptured. With #ChromeSelfie you can share sites with your family and friends on social media and via instant messages, along with a handsome selfie instead of cumbersome text.”
Google Inbox got Smartbox:
The YouTube blog has a strange post up:
The link goes to this:
This makes more sense when you realize that YouTube has added a music button to all videos, which when pushed, plays this song, regardless of how appropriate.
Though he is on leave, Matt Cutts isn’t stopping at Google Panda videos. On his personal blog, he announced his “next project” called AutoSEO. You can read all about it at seo.ninja.
