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I almost forgot today was April Fools day. I feel like since Covid, the national mood (TM) was such that Google and co stopped doing April Fools pranks, and/or if they did them, they were so safe they were groan inducing.
Looking around at the roundup links for 2024, there aren't many that happened this year, from the looks of it. So I wanted to post this one, because it's the rarest of rare - one that I thought was really incredibly well done.
It wasn't even by Google though, right? This looks like it was by Extinction Rebellion. I can't imagine the legal team at Google ever approving something like this.
Sorry, I was super unclear there. This was not Google.
However, Google also sometimes has done their own April Fools bits, and historically Google has been big part of April Fools hijinks. So I did mention them as a company that does these, and I did post this which is impersonating Google as an april fools prank, but yeah, this particular one was not at all carried out by Google.
Honestly, I don't miss Internet April Fools.
It was funny 20 years ago when Google started doing it, fun to see high quality april fools from big established companies. But it got old very fast.
It was nice when it was limited to Usenet only. You knew what was coming and why, and generally speaking businesses stayed away from it.
Talk is fucking cheap. When Google has cleaned up its act for ten years, we'll consider trusting their good intentions. Until then Google is an enshitified company selling personal secrets to the very plutocrats that are burning the world.
This is not from Google. This is Extinction Rebellion registering a domain to prank Google, by speaking in their voice and resolving to stop funding climate deniers. It's both a cheeky prank and a way to put pressure on Google to take accountability.