Skip to main content

April Fool and Google (2013): Collection of All Google’s April Fools Jokes

Every year, Google goes all out for April Fools’ Day. The company not only pulls together more jokes than all the other tech giants, but the company makes a point to outdo itself too. It honestly gets difficult to keep track of everything Google thinks up, so Like Last Year I'm putting together a roundup.

1. Google Maps Treasure Mode


First up, Google has created a new treasure map mode on Google Maps. Last year, the company showed off an 8-bit version, but this year it wants you to go out and explore 2D hand drawn landmarks, find hidden treasure chests, and “Beaware of pirates!” (yep, that’s a typo).

Google’s announcement talks of the Google Maps Street View team finding a treasure map belonging to the infamous pirate, William “Captain” Kidd, on a recent expedition in the Indian Ocean to expand its underwater Street View collection. The map contains a variety of encrypted symbols which you are tasked with deciphering:
Google’s headquarters naturally gets a special flag:

2. YouTube’s ready to select a winner

Next up is the closing of YouTube. Apparently all this time the site has been an eight-year contest, the goal of which was to find the best video ever created. Google is getting ready to pick the winner; at midnight on April Fools’ it is shutting down the site (the company will relaunch it many years later with just the winning video).
Google says it has 30,000 technicians working on narrowing down the list. It has even managed to get YouTube celebrities, commenters, as well as film reviewers on board to participate in the prank.
“And be sure to tune in for Day 1 of our live ceremony from 9 a.m. PT, April 1, when we will begin announcing the ‘Best Video’ nominees,” Google writes in its blog post. “This announcement will resume for 12 hours every day for the next two years.”

3. Google Nose

Third on our list is Google Nose, which has a nice big BETA tag. As its name implies, the service lets you search to find out what your queries smell like. Queue the “Google Nose everything about you” jokes.
Here’s how Google pulled it off:
  • Street Sense vehicles have inhaled and indexed millions of atmospheric miles.
  • Android Ambient Odor Detection collects smells via the world’s most sensible mobile operating system.
  • SMELLCD™ 1.8+ high-resolution compatible for precise and controlled odors.
We’d try it if we could. The blue try button redirects you to amusing searches such as “wet dog,” “used napkin,” or “diaper.”

4. Google+ photos get +Emotion

Over on Google+, you can now add “stylized emotions” to your photos. Just open one of your pictures in the lightbox, click the “Add emotion” button at the top left of the screen, and then watch as Google figures out everyone’s emotion in the photo and adds an “emotion icon” to each.

5. Gmail Blue

Google has made everything blue in Gmail. All characters, buttons, and menus are now blue. The Blue Man Group even makes an appearance.
Next stop on the April Fools Google Train? “Gmail Blue.”That should explain itself, but just in case, it took Google “six years to develop the technology” to turn Gmail blue. Google turns nine tomorrow, and it might as well just go for it.

Vi

asdasdsitors from the International Space Station – Control Room

If you’re a Google Analytics users, you might find this one amusing

Visitors from the International Space Station – Control Room

If you’re a Google Analytics users, you might find this one amusing
sasasas

6. Visitors from the International Space Station – Control Room

If you’re a Google Analytics users, you might find this one amusing.



7. Google SCHMICK

This one’s another Google Maps joke. The company’s Australian team lets you spruce up the look of your house with Google SCHMICK (Simple Complete House Makeover Internet Conversion Kit). The post notes there are “hundreds of themes and features to choose from,” and even starts you off with some ideas to get started:
Feeling patriotic? Why not fly the Australian flag, leave some lamingtons out for Skippy or permanently switch on ‘Night View’ to place the Southern Cross directly above your inner city terrace. Perhaps, you’ll choose to add in a sheep or two and a kangaroo like Uncle Burke, throw in a miniature replica of Coffs Harbour’s Big Banana, or ‘go international’ and throw the Big Ben on top of that new second story you’ve just added to your house.
Can’t afford the electricity bill for a Christmas lights display? Worry no longer. You can now install a virtual festive display to suit any holiday and put the neighbours to shame in seconds. Create an Easter egg hunt for your kids, build a 360-degree haunted house panorama for trespassers or pretend you’re in the northern hemisphere and let it snow on your front porch. Or, if you don’t have a front porch, simply add one in using the House Builder tool.
Here’s the result:

8. Google Fiber Poles

This one is a feature I actually wouldn’t mind if Google wasted money on. Google’s engineers have decided to roll out Google Fiber to utility poles, so you can get Gigabit speeds wherever you can get electricity.

9. Google Apps gets Levity Algorithm

The newly added Levity Algorithm in Google Apps spices up “even the most boring of work days” by letting you send happier emails, hold more engaging meetings, write more mind-blowing presentations, and so on. I just finished watching the season finale of Walking Dead and then this guy pops up on my screen:

10. Google Wallet Mobile ATM

Here’s another fun one: the company has introduced Google Wallet Mobile ATM. The device attaches to your smartphone after which it “dispenses money instantly and effortlessly– forever ending your search for the nearest bank or ATM.” All you have to do is type in your personal pin code on your cell phone to access all your cash from the palm of your hand by entering the amount you want via touch or voice. Here’s the best part: “If your mobile ATM is running low on funds, a self-driving, armored, hybrid vehicle will be alerted and dispatched to your location – arriving within minutes to quickly and safely refill their ATM.”

11. Google Analytics adds support for legacy technology

Over the next few weeks, Google will be rolling out a new set of old school export options for Analytics that go beyond the Web: CDROM, 3.5 floppy, sticky note, and papyrus. At the same time, the company is also adding new send-to options: fax machine, electronic telegraph, carrier pigeon, and telegram messenger.
new export options Round Up: All of Google’s jokes for April Fools 2013

12. Google Japan adds Patapata support

This one is in Japanese, so here’s the translation to get you started. In short, users can now input text using the “Patapata,” a device with just one button. “You no longer have to remember anything. Japanese input just press and release.”

13. Google Play Developer Console lets you add an “Awesome” app

Those with Google Play Developer accounts have received an “Add new awesome application” option in the dashboard. Google says it will help you build a new app with “advanced machine learning algorithms.”
awesome Round Up: All of Google’s jokes for April Fools 2013


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

FirefoxOS, A keyboard and prediction: Story of my first contribution

Returning to my cubical holding a hot cup of coffee and with a head loaded with frustration and panic over a system codebase that I managed to break with no sufficient time to fix it before the next morning.  This was at IBM, New York where I was interning and working on the TJ Watson project. I returned back to my desk, turned on my dual monitors, started reading some blogs and engaging on Mozilla IRC (a new found and pretty short lived hobby). Just a few days before that, FirefoxOS was launched in India in the form of an Intex phone with a $35 price tag. It was making waves all around, because of its hefty price and poor performance . The OS struggle was showing up in the super low cost hardware. I was personally furious about some of the shortcomings, primarily the keyboard which at that time didn’t support prediction in any language other than English and also did not learn new words. Coincidentally, I came upon Dietrich Ayala in the FirefoxOS IRC channel, who at

April Fool and Google Part 2: A Round Up of ALL of Google’s April Fools Jokes

Ok....this post I think will contain all of the pranks I could find  for today. After my last post here http://rkrants.blogspot.com/2012/04/april-fool-and-google-my-favorite.html Last Time I reported Only a handful of the pranks.. Understandable, as it was only the morning. After that I stumbled upon more of them Which I am gonna round up here. Now staring with the list. The very first one is obviously our favourite Google Maps Quest The above is their official video. In a post in Google Plus they say about it as follows  Today  + Google Maps  announced Google Maps 8-bit for NES. With #8bitmaps , you can do everything you'd normally do in Maps—search for famous landmarks and sites around the world, get directions and even use Street View. Just in time for April Fool's Day, Google has introduced Google Maps Quest, a retro 8-bit version of its mapping tool that is... totally awesome. In a characteristically whimsical video, available above, Google emplo

Curious case of Cisco AnyConnect and WSL2

One thing Covid has taught me is the importance of VPN. Also one other thing COVID has taught me while I work from home  is that your Windows Machine can be brilliant  as long as you have WSL2 configured in it. So imagine my dismay when I realized I cannot access my University resources while being inside the University provided VPN client. Both of the institutions I have affiliation with, requires me to use VPN software which messes up WSL2 configuration (which of course I realized at 1:30 AM). Don't get me wrong, I have faced this multiple times last two years (when I was stuck in India), and mostly I have been lazy and bypassed the actual problem by side-stepping with my not-so-noble  alternatives, which mostly include one of the following: Connect to a physical machine exposed to the internet and do an ssh tunnel from there (not so reliable since this is my actual box sitting at lab desk, also not secure enough) Create a poor man's socks proxy in that same box to have my ow