Google April Fools' Day 2013 Pranks: A Roundup

Google this year has barely left a stone unturned with its April Fools' Day pranks, ranging from a YouTube shutting down announcement, to a new bogus service, called Google Nose.

 

 

While Google has recently been accused of too aggressively spring-cleaning its myriad useful and interesting services, with victims such as Reader, the company still does a good job amusing users all year round with its Doodles. Of course, the company has not missed many chances for fun with April Fools' Day in the past, and this year’s extravaganza makes us whistle appreciatively wonder at the amount Google is willing to spend for a few pranks.

There have already been at least nine pranks so, will April Fools' Day scarcely underway in some parts of the world. We hope Google has more in store for us today. In the meanwhile, check out our round-up of Google’s April Fools' Day shenanigans, pieced together by bloggers and users.

YouTube to Shutdown for 10 Years
YouTube put up a video on its channel on Sunday, titled “YouTube’s ready to select a winner”. The video contained “A Message from YouTube,” announcing the site will be shutting down on April 1st night. It also posted on its official YouTube blog.

According to the prank, the largest video-sharing network was actually created as a video-entry contest, and now they finally have enough videos, after 8-yearsz. The video revealed YouTube would be using a whole panel of judges and commenters to select the ‘Best Video’, with the help of 30,000 technicians to narrow the massive list of submissions to 150,000. Day 1 ‘Best Video’ nominations were scheduled to be announced later on April Fools' Day. The whole process will take 10 years, Google joked, with YouTube set to re-open 10 years later, solely featuring the Best Video. The winner will receive $500 for their next creative endeavour, and an MP3 player.

The video description reads: Thanks for all your great entries.
YouTube finally has enough videos to begin selecting a winner.
What do you think is the #bestvideo on YouTube?

We've been thrilled with all of the diverse, creative entries we've seen so far, and we can't wait to begin the process of selecting the best video. We'll be announcing the winner in 10 years.

Far down in the description, Google thankfully reveals the whole thing was just a charade for April Fools' Day, something we feel would have been vital for some of the many millions of YouTube viewers, who would have otherwise gone crazy trying to watch as many of their favourite videos one last time, before YouTube deleted them all – like the prank video cautions. Some, we are sure, fell for it anyways. 

Google Nose beta
Google unveiled a new prank service, called Google Nose beta, supposedly designed to tell you what your search queries smell like. However, the ‘Nose beta’ tab in search results doesn’t actually reveal anything, but instead redirects you to the Google Nose landing page, which invites you to try the service, returning random preset results, where ‘success’ smells ‘sweet’, ‘airport terminal’ smells like ‘baked tarmac and lost luggage’. The information is apparently compiled in the Google Aromabase (featuring 15M+ scentibytes), which takes data from Android phones and StreetView cars equipped with odour detection capabilities.

Calling itself “the new scentsation in search” and “your internet sommelier”, Google Nose insists ‘smelling is believing’. Apart from the added functionality of ‘Don't ask, don't smell’ SafeSearch, Google jokingly promises ‘Scratch and Sniff Books’, ‘Foodles’, ‘Self-driving New Car Smell’, ‘YouTube Nosed Captions’ and ‘AdScentBETA for Business’. Let us see how long the service stays alive, or if Google will try to pass it off as an aid for olfactory-challenged users.

Google+ Photos with +Emotion
Google introduced a new bogus feature for Google+ Photos, called +Emotion, which allows users to add stylized emotions, or emoticons to their photos. According to Google’s Erik Murphy-Chutorian, the +Emotion service will help users “create richer, more expressive photographs.”

According to Murphy-Chutorian, ‘nothing beats the richness and elegance of a few properly placed colons, parentheses, letters and hyphens’ such as – :-) :P :O :/ – which are “representations of your innermost emotions,” “simple, and best of all, unambiguous :P”

Gmail Blue

 The Gmail Team announced Gmail Blue with a post on the official Gmail blog. The post reads:

Gmail launched nine years ago on April 1st, 2004. Since then you've been able to use hundreds of new features that push the boundaries of what email can do and make it easier to get things done.

Starting today, you'll get to experience the next big step for Gmail, Blue. 

Google SCHMICK Google Australia had its own Maps prank, called SCHMICK, short for Simple Complete House Makeover Internet Conversion Kit. It has been designed to give users the ability to modify their homes on Google Maps, adding various themes and features. The SCHMICK feature can’t actually be accessed though, and is just a gimmick. Clicking on the find out more link, leads to multiple "April Fools' Day" announcements.