Google’s April Fools Failure

Tech companies often celebrate April Fools by releasing a comical fake product. Google is the most famous culprit with previous pranks that include Gmail Paper (a service where Google would print all of your e-mails and post mail them) and Pac-maps (a service that let users play Pacman across all any map in Google maps). This year, Gmail launched its Mic Drop feature on April Fools. If you selected the button, your e-mail would include a gif of a Minion dropping a mic and all further communication between two parties would be concluded. Many lauded the addition as hilarious, but it suffered from a bad design decision. The mic drop button was placed next to the normal send button and MANY people accidentally sent their mails using the mic drop button unaware of the accompanying minion gif. This led to confusion and professional embarrassment as otherwise serious messages included a comical gif. Some people even lost their jobs over the gaffe. Would you trust a dealer of a luxury item if they sent you a mic drop gif? Maybe not. And this was problematic for Google.

I believe that Google’s joke was comical and well-intentioned. However, the design mishap led to a social media disaster. Google pulled the feature quickly amidst customer uproar. Given Google’s engineering prowess, it’s surprising that they would design the feature a careless manner. Better social media management (e.g., running the feature through a focus group) may have fixed this miscue). In summary, Google made a serious mistake and will certainly change direction next April Fools.