As the internet gets flooded with April Fools’ Day jokes — good or lame — it can be hard to keep track of the ones that are worthy of your attention. Google, in particular, is known for rolling out a ton of different pranks. Most of them are actually pretty fun since they are localized to each Google product or regional team.
Here’s a look at what we’ve found out there this year.
Pac-Maps
The ability to play Pac-Man on Google Maps isn’t exactly new — the team released the same joke back in 2015 — but perhaps it’s done so again because of how popular it was when it first came around. Obviously, the only way to roll out Pac-Maps: The Sequel is to do it with Ms. Pac-Man.
Google Gnome
Dieter Bohn is having a bit of a crisis over here,
seeing as two weeks ago, he tweeted a pun that turned into this year’s
Google Home April Fools’ joke. It’s a smart gnome for your lawn that can
tell you the direction of the wind and inform your child that all
living things decompose. Isn’t it a joy?
Google Assistant
If you ask your Google Assistant about April Fools’ Day,
she’ll reply with some silly advice like “don’t trust your relatives” or
to remain skeptical of whatever appears to be unusual. Occasionally,
she also tells us to check back on April 1st, so we’ll update this
section when the clock hits midnight in our local time zone.
Google Wind
To shoo away clouds from raining on Western Europe’s
parade, the local team in The Netherlands unveiled Google Wind, a series
of “machine learning” windmills that can blow away cloudy skies for
another day. In the past, many of Google Cloud Platform’s April Fools’
jokes have been literal cloud-themed.
Google Bubble Wrap Keyboard
From the Google Japan team who brought you Google Kazoo, every year the local Input Tools team devises a new form factor for keyboards. This year, it’s bubble wrap
(or Puchi Puchi, in Japanese.) The concept machine lets you push the
bubble wrap around for letters you need to form sentences, then feed it
through a reader to send your message. Some even have scented air filled
in the bubbles so you can smell the sea breeze from Hawaii as you pop
each pocket.
April Fools’ Day is still getting started in many parts of the world (yes, I know,
sigh) so check back soon as we continue updating this post. Better yet,
if you see any that we’ve missed, feel free to tip us at tips@theverge.com.
