Google has been entertaining us on April Fool's Day since 2000, skipping only 2001 and 2003. Their first April Fool's hoax in 2000 was Google Mentalplex which promised search results if we simply projected a mental image of what we wanted to find. My favorite of the Mentalplex FAQs is: "Does MentalPlex violate my privacy?
- While MentalPlex does have the potential of probing your deepest darkest secrets and desires, this information is only used in aggregate and rarely sold to advertisers unless they ask very, very nicely"
Knowing what we know about Google +1, this seems almost true. My favorite was Google Romance from 2006. "Those who generally favor the 'throw enough stuff at the wall' approach to online dating might find it useful to employ our Batch Profile Uploading option." bizologie co-founder April Kessler is from Kansas, so Google's decision in 2010 to change their name to Topeka was her favorite.
Today Google brings us GMail Motion:
And YouTube celebrates 100 Years:
And Wolfram Alpha changes its name:
