Today, I checked my GMail this morning and they tried to make a joke about a new feature detailing the ability of permitting you to falsify the delivery time of e-mail that you send. (Like making it appear that e-mail can be delivered earlier than you sent it — defying time.)
Google historically has been pretty comical (in a geeky kind of way) for April Fools’ Day pranks. This feature is actually useful, but they made it look so realistic and communicated in an official way via the Hat when you login to their interface.
I don’t think many people caught on that it was a joke. In fact, I’ll wager to say that there will be some disgruntled users tomorrow when they see that feature disappear. That said, it would be useful for Google to let GMail users adopt some features for scheduling e-mails. I’m not sure though, the e-mail product is already packed with features.
Compete has coverage disclosing the traffic that Google receives on previous April Fool’s hoaxes. As one would expect traffic has dramatically increased over the years to them. Have we become feature-blind? Do we just assume Google will always come out with something that defies the laws of physics, time and space?
In the spirit of April Fool’s Day, I let users know “everything was broken,” but in the same note, I informed them that it was a joke. Hopefully our customers have a sense of humor. It is kind of hard to pull pranks on loyal users of your product/service/brand… so I hope Google considers their audience when they do stuff like this.
What pranks have you pulled on friends, family or co-workers — or has the tradition worn off?
