After examining our world’s current condition, Google has decided to step back from celebrating April Fools’ Day this year. The company is arguably one of the top April Fools pranksters around. Each year, we’re used to seeing new and original gags from the tech company. After considering what the entire world is going through today with COVID-19, the jokes will have to wait till next year.
Recently, Business Insider acquired an internal email from Google’s head of marketing, Lorraine Twohill. In the email, Twohill wrote that “This year, we’re going to take the year off from that tradition out of respect for all those fighting the Covid-19 pandemic.” In addition, she wrote that while major jokes planned have been cancelled but there may be smaller projects still going forward that they are unaware of.
“Our highest goal right now is to be helpful to people, so let’s save the jokes for next April, which will undoubtedly be a whole lot brighter than this one.”
Google has incorporated jokes and pranks in several online sites during previous April Fool’s Day traditions. For example, last year, users were able to play the classic game of Snake in Google Maps. Other gags included Space Invaders in Google Calendar and jokes from Google Assistant. In all, Google enjoyed the challenge of outdoing itself year after year, even if other companies never participated.
While a laugh may be helpful during our current situation, certain jokes and pranks will only bring unnecessary stress. Everyone around the world is impacted in some way by the COVID-19 virus. The last thing we need is more misread information spread through social media. Still, we will all get through this and have more to look forward to in the near future.