When Google launched +1 last week there were several people out there who believed it was an early version of Google’s April Fools joke. After all, every year Google tends to do one or more pranks to fool the community.
+1 didn’t turn out to be the joke, but on April Fools Day Google made up for that with several jokes. They introduced Gmail Motion, “a new way to communicate” with Gmail: controlling Gmail with your body. Based on that technology they supposedly built lots of new products in no time, with Google Teleport Search (in Chinese only) being my personal favorite. But they also showed us YouTube 1911 and they were hiring Google Autocompleter. Maybe not all as believable as possible, but sure a few you can at least laugh a little bit about. An overview.
Gmail Motion:
Being a Google Autocompleter:
Other jokes:
- Chromercise: increase your hands’ strength and dexterity while browsing the web
- YouTube celebrates its 100th anniversary with a flashback to its original homepage
- Body Browser lets you explore new anatomical terrain
- Look who’s going Google!
- Google Maps now features strange sightings around the world
- Docs Motion follows Gmail Motion into new gestural terrain
- Meow Me Now helps you find kittens near you
- An exciting acquisition
- gBlimps: the inevitable new ad platform
- New sessions added to Google I/O
- The Voice-alyzer function in Google Voice
- New display advertising formats take marketers back to the good old days
- Voice Search became available in Pig Latin
- ChromeLite
- Making Comic Sans the default font for all Google properties—get a preview on the search results page
- Travel through time and space to discover things from “then and now” with Google Teleport Search (in Chinese only)
- A Moon loan
- Earkut: receive notifications when someone visits your Orkut profile
- A new look for our webmaster team members
