Today is a worst/best day for journalists or bloggers, depending on your worldview: April Fools Day. Many technology companies come out and try to fool people with fake or funny news. Below is a collection of, what appears to be, April Fools Day hoaxes from Google and other search related companies for the day. I do hope to continue to update it throughout the day.
- Google changed its name to Topeka today after the city in Kansas changed their name from Topeka to Google.
- Google Docs let’s you upload anything, really, anything you want, including your sofa
- Google AJAX let’s you define evil API requests from legit ones with the &evil=true parameter
- Google Mobile let’s you find where I am.
- Google Maps does 3D street views. Go to the maps, and go down to a street level and you will be able to see the man with 3D glasses.
- Google Wave notifies you via human notification
- YouTube lets you watch videos in text only mode.
- Google building a nuclear project according to TechCrunch
- Google Books go 3D
- Google gets into building jails for municipalities
- Google launches Google Translate for Animals
- Google Maps Australia does Australian speaking directions
- Google voice does standard voicemail capabilities
- Google bought ProBlogger
- Google’s search results summary bar shows results in something else then seconds (try it with any Google search)
- Some Google Japan joke
- The Search Engine Roundtable is now just SE Roundtable and sells tables
- Google launched Google Romance
- I assume this is a joke, our very own Greg Sterling is joining Google
- Gmail vowel outage
- Picasa’s life size image view
- Google Reader’s ReaderAdvantage miles program
- Google Analytics gives up all web metrics in exchange for just tracking hits
- Google has launched the Kaffein update
- Google Chrome extension to unmute the web
- Google AdSense adds wingdings font to the ads
More to come….