Google Gets Silly For April Fools' Day

Google, it would seem, fancies itself as a company with a sense of humor. Me? I've always found it kind of serious...even stern. Yes, it has a silly name, decorates its logo on holidays, and indulges in more quixotic projects than the average billion-dollar corporation. But what makes Google Google is its relentless focus on being practical and to the point. (By far the best example of Google being playful is the very first one, the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button--if that ever goes away, I'm switching to Ask.com immediately.)

Today, however, is April Fools' Day--and the Big G has sprung at least two practical jokes on the Web. One's its announcement that it's becoming a Toilet Internet Service Provider (TiSP), using the sewage system to provide wireless broadband. Here's more on the whole project, which involves (would involve? pretends to involve?) stringing fiber-optic cable up into your home via the toilet. There's even a Google Group on the new service.

I dunno--the basic idea here is risible, I guess, but it's rare to see an, er, piece of bathroom humor that's so ambitious and yet so lacking in smirky playfulness. The Google guys are world-class geeks, and I'm sure I'm far from the first person to note that geek-generated humor is sometimes more literal than boffo.

I do kinda like Gmail Paper, which I learned about via my colleague Steve Bass's blog. It's an alleged new Gmail feature that involves your e-mail automatically being printed out and mailed to you in shipping boxes. If it existed, I think some folks would use and like it.

Google, by the way, isn't the only one who's imagining improbable Google services today. See also this.

Google being Google, it may be an inherently tough company to make fun of. I mean, so much that's true about the company is wildly improbable that aspects of Google truth, at least, are stranger than Google fiction. (If Google Print wasn't real, it would make for a dandy hoax.)

If this blog post feels kinda dry and serious itself--hey, I acknowledge there's nothing funny about a blogger clinically analyzing April Fool's day pranks and deeming them inadequately entertaining--maybe it's because I've always been somewhat wary of April Fools' Day in general. My birthday is tomorrow, and I grew up having to listen to "jokes" about me being born a day too late.

Still, I do admit that there are such things as genuinely brilliant April 1st pranks, some of which have taken place on the Internet--and a bunch of them are chronicled in this definitive report.

Happy April Fools' Day, by the way....

Comments

Oh, sure, everyone's having a good laugh here. But TiSP is a blatant rip-off.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/13240

netbuzz

April 01, 2007

1:37 PM PT

I hope you have a very happy birthday, Harry.

ebrown

April 02, 2007

11:43 AM PT