It is a known fact that Google comes up with elaborate April Fool’s Jokes every year and 2013 is no exception. Google in fact seems to have outdone itself this time with quite a bunch of them. Lets take a quick look at what this year’s Google pranks are:
Gmail Blue
Google’s much used email service Gmail has more or less remained the same over the years. It has been around for almost 9 years now and Google has decided to give it a facelift. Say hello to Gmail Blue. Born out of six years of intensive research, Gmail Blue is a revolutionary version of Gmail – with everything in blue. Everything – right from the compose button to the text in the email has been changed to blue. The Blue color has been inspired from nature as explained in the following Google video.
Google Maps Treasure Hunt Mode
Following last year’s prank where they introduced an 8 bit version of Google Maps, this time Google has added a “Treasure Hunt” mode to Google Maps. The story behind this prank is the Google StreetView team finding a treasure map belonging to the 17th century pirate William Kidd. Explore Google Maps Treasure Hunt here
Watch the video about it
Google Nose
Next up is the “revolutionary” Google Nose service. The service, still in Beta will let you help search smells. You can for example search for “wet dog” and Google will help you figure out how a wet dog smells like. Google has also posted a logical sounding explanation on how Google Nose works. According to them, Google deployed “StreetSense” vehicles have inhaled and indexed a hell lot of places and indexed millions of types of scents. A technology known as Android Ambient Odor Detection is used to collects smells using an Android laden smell collecting device. More about Google Nose here.
The Video
Google Is Shutting Down YouTube
You heard that right. YouTube is shutting down. The video sharing service that Google acquired in 2005 was an 8 year long “contest” – the aim of which was to find out the worlds best video. After the shutdown happens at midnight today, over 30,000 judges will screen through all videos on YouTube and would eventually arrive at a decision on the best video that has been posted to YouTube. The results would be announced a decade later and the winner gets an MP3 player. How exciting is that!
Google Fiber Poles
Another one for this year happens to be Google’s Fiber Poles that would allow users access to its Fiber Internet Connectivity using utility poles. The video shows the technology to be already deployed in Kansas and people flocking around these poles for Internet Connectivity. That btw is a good idea methinks.
Google Analytics Gets Visitors From Space
Another not so prominent Google April Fool prank can be noticed by some Google Analytics users. They will see that they have active users from the International Space Station. The number of visitors is shown to be 41 – probably denoting the month and the date.
Google Plus Stylized Emotions
If you happen to be a Google+ user, you would now be able to add what Google calls “stylized emotions” to your uploaded photos.All you need to do is to open an uploaded image in lightbox and click the “Add emotion” button at the top left of the screen. Google will then automatically detect the emotions of the persons in the picture and adds a corresponding emotion icon to their photo. This trick actually works and might be here to stay.
If you have come across any new Google pranks for this year, do let us know!
