For Google, April Fools' Day is the annual launch day for a slew of gag products and hoax services you'll likely never see in real life. Google's practical jokes began a day early in 2012, with 8-Bit Google Maps, Chrome Multitask Mode making their debut, then continued early this morning with the YouTube Collection, Google Racing, Click-to-Teleport search ads, and much more.
Here's a recap of all the April Fools' Day fun from this year.
Google 8-Bit Maps for NES
Like Google Maps? Still have your dusty old Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in the back of your closet or up in your attic? Then you're in luck.
Google is finally adding support for the classic video game system with the launch of 8-bit maps, touting "low-res graphics, simple and intuitive controls, and a timeless soundtrack." You can explore the world and find landmarks, including:
The White House and Washington Monument
Mount Rushmore in South Dakota
The Statue of Liberty in New York City
St. Louis Arch in Missouri
Hollywood sign in Los Angeles, California
Space Needle in Seattle, Washington
Area 51
Eiffel Tower in Paris, France
Louvre Museum in Paris, France
Taj Mahal in Agra, India
Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy
Roman Colosseum
Sphinx & Great Pyramids in Giza, Egypt
Chichen Itza, Mexico
Easter Island
Parthenon in Athens, Greece
Kremlin in Moscow, Russia
Great Buddha of Kamakura, Japan
Nazca Lines in Nasca, Peru
(Seen any other cool 8-bit Google Maps landmarks? Leave a note in the comments!)
This video offers a full walk-through and preview. The "trial version" is available at Google Maps in Quest Mode:
Chrome Multitask Mode
Cursing because you only have one cursor? Say hello to the ambinavigation revolution known as Chrome Multitask Mode.
Thanks to Google's unending need for speed, you can surf the web with both hands by using more than one mouse on the same computer. Or, surf with your friends or loved ones at the same time.
Here's where you can try out Multitask Mode. Here's a video explaining it:
All of YouTube Put on a DVD
YouTube joined in with an April Fools' Day hoax of its own. In a post on the YouTube Blog, Chet Flanagan, director of DVD product management, asked, "Loved a video so much that liking it, favoriting it, sharing it and even subscribing to the channel wasn't enough? Just had to hold it in your grasp and never ever let it go?" He added, "We know the feeling, so today we're making The YouTube Collection available for you in a new holdable version: DVD. A direct result of your feedback and demand, The YouTube Collection is a first of its kind offering in web video."
Here's a video outlining the details.
Google Racing: Self-Driving NASCAR Race Cars
For those who enjoy spending Sunday afternoons watching cars speed around a track at 200 miles per hour but don't like all that crashing, now there's a Google racing team. Partnering with NASCAR, Google's fleet of autonomous vehicle will duel against carbon-based life forms.
"I hope that today's announcement of Google Racing will mark another step along this path, and spur innovations that improve the daily lives of people all over the world," wrote Google co-founder Sergey Brin. "Or at the very least offer us a few cool new thrills on hot weekend afternoons."
Note that the car number is 10^100 (known as a googol in mathematics – the number 1 followed by 100 zeroes) and the car slogan is "I'm steering lucky", a play on Google's long-time "I'm feeling lucky" search option that brings searchers to the No. 1 result rather than showing an entire search engine results page.
Gmail Tap
Google has revealed its futuristic binary language made up of dots and dashes for Android and iOS users on the go: Gmail Tap, which reduces 26 keys to 2.
Gmail also introduced multi-email, allowing power users to double their productivity by typing multiple emails at once, predictive text mode, and optional audio feedback.
Google Street Roo View
To provide panoramic pictures of the Australian outback, Google has announced Google Street Roo. The search giant plans to equip more than 1,000 kangaroos with 360-degree cameras powered by solar panels stitched into custom-made "roo jackets" to capture images as they hop around during daylight hours. The goal is to capture images of 98 percent of the area within three years.
We're all holding our breath to find out whether any kangaroos will file privacy complaints with the Australian government.
Click-to-Teleport
Phone calls and website visits are so old-fashioned. Now when people click on a search ad, Google will teleport through time and space – directly to a business location.
For advertisers, Google says you should:
- Optimize for closest location: Least disorienting for visitors, and helps you maintain a local feeling.
- Optimize for conversions: Teleports visitors to locations where your customers are most likely to convert.
- Rotate evenly: Teleports visitor to a random business location and helpful for avoiding overcrowded business locations.
Good news for advertisers: offline sales have increased by a whopping 3,600 percent. Bad news for users and businesses: while Click-to-Teleport is in beta, there is no "teleport back home" option.
Google Really Advanced Search
Sometimes Advanced Search isn't enough. Now if you need to search with new options, Google Really Advanced Search has you covered for the following:
- Rhyming slang for
- This exact word or phrase, whose sum of unicode code points is a mersenne prime
- Font
- Content that is true
- will have been modified
- Embarrassing grammatical faux pas
- Looping midi music in the genre of
Not enough? You can also "tickle a unicorn"; "download our ranking code so you can run Google at home"; and "search by odor".
Fittingly, clicking on any of those, or the blue Advanced Search button will take you to the search results page for "april fools".
Control the Weather!
Says Google: "Don't like the weather? Now you can change it in your region by selecting from the dropdown to change precipitation and setting your own temperature."
Choose the temperature along with whatever weather conditions (e.g., sunny, foggy, windy, rain, thunderstorm). Then click the "Update weather" button. Google explains that it will take 45 minutes to update and you must agree to be responsible for the weather (if you're too afraid, you can click "Dismiss")!
Note: We'll be updating this post throughout the day if/when more spoofs are uncovered. If you spot any other funny pranks from Google, other search engines, social networks, or tech companies, let us know in the comments! Also let us know what you think of this year's edition of jokes.
Google April Fools' Day Hoaxes History: 2000-2011
In 2000, Google asked users to "project a mental image of what you want to find" while staring at the MentalPlex circle. When we clicked (or visualized clicking) within the MentalPlex circle, we got an error message that said, "Error 01: Brainwaves received in analog. Please re-think in digital."
In 2002, Google revealed the technology behind its great results – PigeonRank – which used low cost pigeon clusters (PCs) to compute the relative value of web pages. Google explained, "Those pages receiving the most pecks are returned at the top of the user's results page with the other results displayed in pecking order."
In 2004, the Google Copernicus Center announced it was interviewing candidates for engineering positions at a lunar hosting and research center, which was opening late in the spring of 2007.
In 2005, the company announced Google Gulp (BETA) with Auto-Drink (LIMITED RELEASE), a line of "smart drinks" designed to maximize your surfing efficiency by making you more intelligent, and less thirsty.
In 2006, the company announced Google Romance, a place where you can post all types of romantic information and, using Google's Soulmate Search, get back search results that could, in theory, include the love of your life.
In 2007, the company announced the launch of Google TiSP (BETA) . The Toilet Internet Service Provider (TiSP) project was a self-installed, ad-supported online service that was offered entirely free to any consumer with a WiFi-capable PC and a toilet connected to a local municipal sewage system.
In 2008, Google announced Project Virgle, a joint project with the Virgin Group to establish a permanent human settlement on Mars. The announcement included videos on projectvirgle's channel on YouTube.
Also that year, YouTube participated in Google's April Fools' Day tradition for the first time. All featured videos on YouTube's linked to "Rick Astley – Never Gonna Give You Up," causing all users of the website who clicked on featured videos to be Rickrolled.
In 2009, Google announced CADIE, the world's first Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity. She immediately assumed control of the company and its products and services.
That year, YouTube gave some users a look at a new "viewing experience" when they selected a video within the "recommended for you" section. This new interface caused the whole layout including the video you were watching to flip upside down.
In 2010, Google announced it was changing its name to Topeka, after that city changed its name to Google the previous month.
At the same time, YouTube unveiled a new quality setting, TEXTp. According to a notice underneath videos, viewing a video with this quality setting enabled allowed YouTube to save one US dollar ($1) per second on bandwidth costs.
In 2011, Google rolled out Comic Sans as its default font across all Google products (one of many pranks). YouTube celebrated its 100th anniversary last year. In honor of this milestone, the video site's homepage was a reproduction of how users might have viewed it in 1911. It also featured the "Top 5 Viral Pictures of 1911."
Search Engine Watch also learned about the Bamboo Update, to restore websites rankings from Google's Panda update.
Greg Jarboe also contributed to this post.
SES Toronto 2012 is June 11-13. Register before May 11 and save up to $300!
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