Short Bytes: Google has killed one of its April Fool’s Day pranks as it caused outrage among Gmail users. According to various complaints and online posts, people lost their jobs and harmed professional relationships.
What is Google’s ‘Drop the mic’ prank?
Just for a single day, Gmail users were able to choose ‘drop the mic’ during email conversations. “Simply reply to any email using the new ‘Send + Mic Drop’ button. 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,” Google explains the feature.
However, according to multiple claims made by users, they ended up losing their jobs and insulting friends. As people clicked on the button, Gmail sent the message and a mic-dropping Minion GIF to the recipient. The feature also stopped their replied from appearing in the conversation.
If you used this feature, you could find the replied in ‘all mail’ tab, but they would remain absent from the typical notifications. As a result many people easily missed their mails.
Google brought this prank to give you some kind of relief if you felt being unnecessarily being tagged in an email and saying goodbye to that email thread forever.
But, according to the claims made by a writer called Allan Pashby, he ended up losing his job as he sent an email with mic drop gif to his boss. Pushy wasn’t so lucky and his boss took offence and fired him with an angry voice mail.
The placement of the button could be held responsible for this backlash as it sat directly next to the default send button.
“Accidentally hit this new ‘mic drop’ button halfway through composing a professional email. Dying to remove this thing,” wrote one user on Google’s product forum.
Another user wrote, “This is horrible – just sent an email to a client with this stupid icon on it. I can’t afford these stupid pranks!”
Considering the fact that it’s April Fool’s Day, many of these claims could be fake. However, keeping in view mind the possibility of some outrage, Google has removed the feature from Gmail:
“Well, it looks like we pranked ourselves this year. ?? Due to a bug, the MicDrop feature inadvertently caused more headaches than laughs. We’re truly sorry. The feature has been turned off. If you are still seeing it, please reload your Gmail page,” a Google spokesperson said.
