Google’s Best April Fools’ Day Pranks

Though the stony face of Matt Cutts will strike fear in the hearts of most digital marketers, Google has always had a lighter side, and no-one loves a good April Fools day prank more than Google.

Since 2008, Google has launched no less than 14 April Fools pranks every year, and each year is more elaborate than the last (they must have a lot of time on their hands!). Wikipedia even has a list of Google hoaxes.

When April 1st rolled around, Google suddenly had a large amount of announcements to make. Here are the top Google pranks from 2014.

Auto Awesome Photobomb

Most of us only dreamed of being photobombed by the man who single handedly brought down the Berlin wall, David Hasselhoff, but for one special day Google made it a reality with a special app on Google +.

AdBirds

We all know PPC, but what about PPP (pay per peck?). One of the sillier Google pranks was the announcement of their new service AdBirds. You could choose to place your ad on either a sparrow, owl, eagle, duck, pigeon or penguin (we see what you did there ¬_¬).

Emoji Translator

Those naughty pranksters at Google Chrome introduced a new plug in for the browser: the emoji translator, which promised to turn all that cumbersome text into their equivalent emojis, saving you time on reading. I have to admit that I was taken in by this one for a few seconds.

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

Data-less Decision Making

Any graduates of Google Analytics academy (can’t wait for the ten year reunion!) will be tickled by this rather nerdy joke course on “Data-less Decision Making”, where Google’s “Analytics Evangelist”, Justin Cutroni, gives us some rather suspect advice on how to make decisions when you get sick of graphs – including the always 50% right ‘coin flip’.

Google Apps for Business Dogs


This one is just silly.

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