Home Technology Google is cancelling April Fools’ Day 2020

Google is cancelling April Fools’ Day 2020

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Along with Christmas, New Years, Easter, birthdays, Halloween and the many other celebrations we partake in for various reasons, another one of those days people look forward to is the April 1. It is that one day of the year where people take things a little less seriously and where telling lies, playing pranks and a little bit of fake news is socially accepted around the world.

Given the current predicament with everyone socially distancing themselves to avoid the spread of Covid-19 and people already unable to discern what is real and fake on the news around the subject, it just feels that now is not the time to be making silly pranks (at least online). Something which Google is agreeing to as they have announced that as a company they will not be taking part in April Fools jokes, as revealed by an internal message reported by Business Insider:

We take the year off from that tradition out of respect for all those fighting the Covid-19 pandemic. Our highest goal right now is to be helpful to people, so let’s save the jokes for next April, which will undoubtedly be a whole lot brighter than this one.

We’ve already stopped any centralized April Fool’s efforts but realize there may be smaller projects within teams that we don’t know about. Please suss out those efforts and make sure your teams pause on any jokes they may have planned — internally or externally.

A great idea by Google during this time, which will do its utmost best to also ensure that information remains reliable on the day when most of us normally don’t trust anything we read. Covid-19 is no laughing matter and the impact that is being felt around the world doesn’t afford us much time to laugh about it. Let’s hope many other sites also play ball and ensure the internet can be a safe haven for change on the day.

And if you’re feeling like Google is spoiling all the fun here don’t worry, with loved ones in close proximity all day, your chances of pulling off an epic prank with them should only increase, so you can still have plenty of fun on the day.

Last Updated: March 30, 2020

3 Comments

  1. Original Heretic

    March 30, 2020 at 13:38

    With all the panic and stress, seems like the PERFECT time for jokes.
    Laughter is the best medicine.

    Reply

    • Wandile Tembe

      April 1, 2020 at 23:38

      True

      Reply

  2. Sarah Ann

    March 30, 2020 at 14:58

    I’m heartbroken, maybe that’s too much,ok I’m disappointed. We’re knee deep in this pandemic, and we’re all washing our hands and hiding at home by ourselves, we rely on our devices to inform and entertain us, the best medicine would be cleaver comedy? I guess in the past, Google – or Google employees, went a little too far with April fool’s, but don’t cancel it altogether? Be appropriate, under the circumstances, and give us fun on April fool’s day. Or give us Easter eggs on any day, I will always love “do a barrel roll”, seeing the search engine spin still makes me laugh, gravity makes it all fall down, and the Google Street Roo, for the Australian outback street view became street roo, someone tied a camera on top of a kangaroo’s head? It was kind of awful, and I almost called PETA on them, but I adopted Roo instead, https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/92d5588d7b88c9205f506dfe83e694ed7ca1eac33257959007fdaec3e7857860.png
    If Google can just remember to be tasteful, laughter is the best medicine for anything that ails you.

    Reply

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