Google April Fools jokes are a thing many people eagerly wait for every year. Most of the time, the search giant doesn’t disappoint us and comes up with something that makes us scratch our heads (or feel dumb).
Unfortunately, Google’s April Fools prank won’t be a thing in 2020 for all the obvious reasons we all know. It’s not surprising because we are only past the first quarter of the year, and our worst fears have already come true.
Anyway, an internal Google email obtained by Business Insider (via The Verge) suggests that the company has canceled any April Fool’s prank this year.
“We’ve already stopped any centralized April Fool’s efforts but realize there may be smaller projects within teams that we don’t know about. Please suss out those efforts and make sure your teams pause on any jokes they may have planned — internally or externally,” writes Google’s marketing head Lorraine Twohill in the email.
The decision has been taken to respect the people fighting against the Coronavirus Pandemic and focus the company’s efforts in providing the required help. Google, along with other tech giants, is already working hard to stop the spread of COVID-19 fake news on the internet.
On similar lines, the search giant canceled Google I/O annual developer conference, paused Google Chrome releases, and launched a Coronavirus online tracker to provide the latest updates.
In the past, some of Google’s April Fools jokes have turned out to be quite believable. The company has been pranking the internet since 2000 when its first April Fools joke was released.
Back in 2007, Google pranked about a broadband service where people had to drop a fiber-cable in their toilet and flush it to get free internet connectivity. I was among those people who fell for it.
One time there was an easter egg that allowed people to play the Pac-Man game on Google Maps. However, one of the April fools pranks blew up badly, and people ended up losing their jobs.
Hence, scrapping the same in such a crucial time would avoid any confusion that may arise.
