April Fools’ DayTech companies pull April Fools’ Day pranks

Published 2 April 2013

April Fools’ day brings out the prankster in all of us, and companies like Google, Hulu, and Twitter are no exception. Twitter, for example, said it will eliminate vowels on its site to make for more efficient conversation. If users want to use vowels, they will have to pay a $5 fee (Twitter did say that it will continue to allow customer to use the “Y” for free, because that letter doubles as a consonant).

April Fools’ day brings out the prankster in all of us, and  companies like Google, Hulu, and Twitter are no exception.

The  Washington Post reports that Google announced Saturday that it will be closing YouTube in order to launch a scent-search engine. Twitter said it will eliminate vowels on its site to make for more efficient conversation. If users want to use vowels, they will have to pay a $5 fee (Twitter did say that it will continue to allow customer to use the “Y” for free, because that letter doubles as a consonant).

Hulu also got in on April Fool’s day, promoting fake television shows such as “The Itchy and Scratchy Show” from the Simpsons, and 30 Rock’s fake show, “The Rural Juror.” Other fake shows include “Inspector Spacetime” from Community and “Mock Trial with J. Reinhold” from Arrested Development.

Google, which has a long history of playing pranks on its users,  launched several jokes yesterday, announced in official-looking  company press  releases.

  • The company announced that it would no longer be accepting submissions for its YouTube contest,  releasing a video saying that the site has been engaged in an eight-year competition to find the best video on the Web. YouTube trotted out several of its biggest stars as “judges” for the contest, and said it will take a 10-year break to review all the entries. The winner gets to have his or her video played on YouTube, plus a sweet clip-on mp3 player and $500 for the “next creative endeavor.”
  • Google Nose, a scent-based mobile search engine that lets users search for smells such as “wet dog” or “self-driving new car smell” in a “15 million scentabyte database.” The video announcing the service parodies Google’s usual dramatic, musical product announcement, and shows interviews with project managers and engineers.
  • A new layer in Google Maps that leads you to hidden treasure buried by William “Captain” Kidd, launching a stylized and interactive map of the world.
  • Gmail Blue, which is announced with a (highly produced) video announcing that Google will make Gmail, well, blue.