On the 1st of April Year after year Google deceives millions of its loyal users by plotting an outrageous feature or revealing a major coup to its services. It really does amaze me that people are unaware of their history and to the extent of which they like a joke, probably to promote the company ethics as a human company.

It dates back to the year 2000, releasing their “MentalPlex” algorithm as the next generation of discovering exactly what a user is searching for – telepathically! Unbelievable, or not so as many were completely flabbergasted as to how they could possible create the technology to do this.

April Fools day 2002 saw the release of Pigeon Rank, the theory behind the much deliberated PageRank. Obviously there was no relation between PageRank and Pigeons, but that the system was highly technological and expensive, the irony was that Google did actually give away some secrets to the actual PageRank algorithm.

My personal favourite hoax was 2004, which saw Google advertise job opportunites for a head quarters on the Moon! The purpose was to develop a new operating system to be called LunaX (get it?) and that Google was creating a research centre on the face of the moon.

Google Gulp was the next April Fools, a beverage that reportedly increased a consumers ability to search engine optimise and improve intelligence. 2005 also saw the release of the invite only Gmail, is there a parody in there somewhere?

In 2006 Google changed their homepage to display as Google dating, offering an online dating service in which you where guaranteed to find your soul mate, claiming that “dating is a search problem – Solve it with Google Dating”. Brilliant.

Another great hoax was last years TiSP, an unthinkable acronym for Toilet internet Service Provider. This was a fictitious broadband service that was activated by dropping a fibre optic cable with a weight on…down your toilet! This would then be carried through your drains to be recovered by a Plumbing Hardware Despatcher (PHD). 60 minutes later you would be connected to the internet via a free Google wireless router.

So that was the history, but what will this years be? Be prepared…

Get Involved