Google Shmoogle

Google was cited by Fortune Magazine as the #1 out of 100 best company to work for, and this is made even more obvious by Google's gimmicks and its tradition of April Fools jokes.



It's All Google Fun
Google's motto: Don't be evil. They said that you can work and make money without being evil. What I like about Google is they make their business fun. They take away the complicated bits and pieces and instead present their service in a very user-friendly way.

For example, if a pop-up blocker prevents Google from opening a window, it would say, 'Grr.. a popup blocker is preventing Google from opening your page' (or something like that). Or, the "Hooray! No Spam Here!" message inside an empty Spam folder in Gmail. If you frequently use Google, you might notice they also change the Google logo every once in a while to reflect current events, like Halloween, or a birthday (or death) of a popular person. You can find more special Google logos here, at the Google page.

Google celebrates New Year 2007

Google celebrates Leonardo da Vinci's birthday

Google celebrates Edvard Munch's Birthday

Google celebrates Louis Braille's Birthday

Google's relaxed corporate culture is made more obvious by Google's tradition of April Fools jokes. In case you missed some of them, here they are:

2000: Google MentalPlex
Google announced a new "MentalPlex" search technology that supposedly read the user's mind to determine what the user wanted to search for, thus eliminating the step of actually typing in the search query.

What Google said is you must think of your search query and look at the rotating circle. Clicking the circle will display your search result.

See for yourself:
Google MentalPlex page
Google MentalPlex FAQs page
Google MentalPlex Usage Illustration page

2002: PigeonRank
Google reveals the technology behind its PageRank System — PigeonRank. Google touts the benefits of this cost-effective and efficient means of ranking pages and reassures readers that there is no animal cruelty involved in the process. The article makes many humorous references and puns based on computer terminology and how Google PageRank really works

See for yourself:
Google PigeonRank page

2004: Google Lunar/Copernicus Center
Fictitious job opportunities for a research center on the moon. Luna/X (a pun to Linux as well as a reference to the Windows XP visual style and Mac OS X) is the name of a new operating system they claimed to have created for working at the research center.

See for yourself:
Google Copernicus Center page

2005: Google Gulp
Google Gulp, a fictitious drink, was announced by Google in 2005. According to the company, this beverage would optimize one's use of the Google search engine by increasing the drinker's intelligence. It was claimed this boost was achieved through real-time analysis of the user's DNA and carefully tailored adjustments to neurotransmitters in the brain (a patented technology termed Auto-Drink). The drink was said to come in "4 great flavors": Glutamate Grape (glutamic acid), Sugar-Free Radical (free radicals), Beta Carroty (beta carotene), and Sero-Tonic Water (serotonin).

This hoax was likely intended as a parody of Google's invite-only email service called Gmail. Although ostensibly free, the company claimed the beverage could only be obtained by returning the cap of a Google Gulp bottle to a local grocery store: a causal loop. In the Google Gulp FAQ, Google replies to the observation "I mean, isn't this whole invite-only thing kind of bogus?" by saying "Dude, it's like you've never even heard of viral marketing."

See for yourself:
Google Gulp page
Google Gulp FAQs page

2006: Google Romance
On April Fool's Day 2006, Google Romance was announced on the main Google search page with the introduction, "Dating is a search problem. Solve it with Google Romance." It pretends to offer a "Soulmate Search" to send users on a "Contextual Date". A parody of online dating, it amusingly had a link for "those who generally favor the 'throw enough stuff at the wall' approach to online dating" to Post multiple profiles with a bulk upload file, you sleaze in addition to Post your Google Romance profile. Clicking on either of these gave an error page, which explained that it was an April Fool's joke and included links to previous April Fool's Jokes for nostalgia.

See for yourself:
Google Romance page
Google Romance FAQs page
Google Romance tour page

2007: Gmail Paper & Google TiSP

Gmail Paper

At about 10:00 PM Pacific time (where Google has its headquarters) the day before April 1, 2007, Google changed the login page for Gmail to announce a new service called Gmail Paper. The service offered to allow users of Google's free webmail service to add e-mails to a "Paper Archive," which Google would print (on "96% post-consumer organic soybean sputum") and mail via traditional post. The service would be free, supported by bold, red advertisements printed on the back of the printed messages. Image attachments would also be printed on high-quality glossy paper, though MP3 and WAV files would not be printed. The page detailing more information about the service features photographs of Ian Spiro and Carrie Kemper, current employees of Google. Also featured are Product Marketing Managers of Gmail Anna-Christina Douglas, and Kevin Systrom.

Gmail Paper Index
Gmail Paper Announcement
Gmail Paper Program Policies

Google TiSP

Google TiSP (short for Toilet Internet Service Provider) was a fictitious free broadband service supposedly released by Google. This service would make use of a standard toilet and sewage lines to provide free Internet connectivity at a speed of 8 Mbit/s (2 Mbit/s upload) (or up to 32 Mbit/s with a paid plan). A user would drop a weighted end of a long, Google-supplied fiber-optic cable in their toilet and flush it. Around 60 minutes later, the end would be recovered and connected to the Internet by a "Plumbing Hardware Dispatcher (PHD)." The user would then connect their end to a Google-supplied wireless router and run the Google-supplied installation media on a Windows XP or Vista computer ("Mac and Linux support coming soon"). Alternatively, a user could request a professional installation, in which Google would deploy nanobots through the plumbing to complete the process. The free service would be supported by "discreet DNA sequencing" of "personal bodily output" to display online ads that relate to culinary preferences and personal health. Google also referenced the cola-and-Mentos reaction in their FAQ: "If you're still experiencing problems, drop eight mints into the bowl and add a two-liter bottle of diet soda."

Google TiSP
Google TiSP FAQ
Installation page
Press Release page

Finally, Google also created a 404 - Not Found page:
Not found page - April fools version