Google made the headlines yesterday
with the release of an excellent April's fool hoax: an 8 bit versionof Google Maps. But there is more: Google released a series of hoaxesthis year. The funniest one is probably the YouTube collection: you
can now have your favorite YouTube videos delivered to your door on
DVDs. Google Street is going to use kangaroos to collect pictures of
Australian roads. Google is going to launch a new NASCAR car, which
would not be hard to believe unless the car was not a 'self-driving
race car'. I would not be surprised if we actually see that happen
twenty years from now.
Gmail is also updated with the Gmail
Tap feature: the usual QWERTY keyword is replaced by two buttons, a
dot and a dash so that users can write everything in morse code. A
rather funny joke, but I'm afraid it will be lost on a lot of
internet users who are too young to know what morse code is. Google
is also interested in the food industry, with the energy bar 'Google
Fiber'. Somehow this bar enhances your ability to surf the internet.
The least funny hoax is probably the Chrome multi-task mode, which
allows you to be more productive when you surf the internet.
Some of these announcements are funnier
than others, but overall, Google is taking April's fool very
seriously. These funny hoaxes are actually a great way of pushing
real Google products. And this strategy works: I have not visited any
other search engine today because Google knows how to keep me
untertained.
No comments:
Post a Comment