Over several hours, companies have dished out their best attempts at making the world chuckle. This happens once a year in celebration of April Fools' Day. Not to be left out, Google has populated most of its services with April Fools' gems and these are some that we have found.
com.google
What you see above is the result of surfing to com.google. By flipping the tradition google.com address, you are directed to a site, like the address, that is completely backwards. The results are backwards, the page orientation is backwards, and to say it is a bit disorienting is an understatement.
YouTube
Although the discovery was coincidental, the comedic effect of pressing the "add music" button was both unexpected and superb. By pressing the newly added button, you will be presented with a 1 second snippet of Darude's "Sandstorm". For those that are not familiar, "Sandstorm" is a trance single that was released in 1999 that was fairly popular.
Naturally, if you want to give it a go, you can press play on the clip above and hit the musical note to apply the effect. This will also work on any other stream that is on YouTube.
Google Maps
Ever fancy playing a game of Pac Man in your own city? Well, Google has made that a reality by converting Google Maps into a playable level of Pac Man. In order to unlock this April Fool's joke, you'll have to navigate to either to Google Maps via browser or open that app via your supported mobile phone. Once you find a location with suitable roads, you'll be able to convert the map into a playable Pac Man level.
Chrome for mobile
While it might seem like a small feature, Google has added the ability to share your reaction via Chrome for iOS and Android. The new button will allow you to capture a selfie and mesh it with the webpage you're currently viewing. After you capture your reaction, you will be able to share the image via social media, email, or text.
Google Inbox
Lastly, we arrive at Google's "Smartbox by Inbox". This is a fresh take on trying to modernize our physical mailboxes by making it a connected device. By applying some of the features of our digital inbox to the physical mailbox, Google has created a smarter and much more intuitive experience. Naturally, the Smartbox will have the ability to automatically organize incoming mail and will provide alerts to the user.
Although there are surely more April Fools' Day jokes scattered about, these are some of the more notables ones that we were able to discover. Although Google did come through with a massive amount of pranks for this year's April Fools', Microsoft still takes the cake for their introduction of MS-DOS for mobile.
14 Comments - Add comment