Google’s Annual April Fools Pranks Are Kind Of Cute This Year

by Alex Alvarez | 2:06 pm, April 1st, 2011

» 6 comments

Every April Fools’ Day, Google delights (or moderately annoys, we guess, depending on your sense of humor) users with little pranks – more like Easter eggs, really – neatly hidden around the web.

And this year is no different!

We’ve noticed a few so far that we’ve really enjoyed:

Typing “Helvetica” into Google search brings up results in everyone’s spam-forwarding aunt’s favorite font – a cheeky move font snobs will really enjoy. Or profoundly hate.

Looking for a new job? (We can help you with that, by the way.) Well, Google is searching for autocompleters to join their team:

Google Earth has introduced a variety of new animals today – including one very famous lake-dweller in Scotland. (This is, of course, not to be confused with earlier Nessie “sightings” by Google Earth users.) Keep an eye out for dragons, a flying saucer, and a tightrope-walking elephant.

Then there’s Google Motion – a system through which people can open, reply to and send mail without using pesky keyboards or a mouse. Laugh now, but we can see certain elements of this being applied to future online communication, Minority Report-style

Have you stumbled upon any others?

April Fool's, Google, Google Earth, Google Motion, Helvetica, pranks

Barack Must Go

Yeah whatever. Goggle this google, no April fools reference implied nor intended.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Hartley-Macklin/553654852 Hartley Macklin

I think the Gmail Motion was a jab at Microsoft Kinect… Anyone else see that?
http://twitter.com/SailRabbits Magister

For a few minutes yesterday, I wondered if the posts about an under-development facial recognition thing from Google Labs was an early joke.

I’m sure others have been following all of the advances and opportunities in augmented reality including Google’s interest/acquisitions, but the ability to run a search or view ads based on a fixed structure or landscape is one thing, while the idea of snapping photos of random strangers and being able to pull up their contact info, social networking accounts and run a Google search sounds like something else, all together.

Unfortunately though, thus far, I guess it hasn’t proven to be a joke.
Alex Alvarez

Hartley Macklin said:
I think the Gmail Motion was a jab at Microsoft Kinect… Anyone else see that?

I’ve heard the “Helvetica” prank was also a dig at Microsoft, seeing how it happens to be responsible for unleashing Comic Sans upon an unsuspecting world.
crclarkNY

Didn’t see any at Google…but did get fooled at Linked In. Sherlock Holmes, Groucho Marx, Ernest Hemingway, etc… were showing up in the “people you may know” section. Forgot what day it was…
captaingrumpy

Do you think Obama could be an April Fools Joke started by China ??????