The Worst April Fool's Joke Ever - Courtesy of Google

The Worst April Fool's Joke Ever

Courtesy of Google
By: BlueRose

I doubt all of you even noticed, but today Google pulled its notorious April Fool's Day prank.

The Prank, however, lacked a certain "Je ne sais quoi" that Google is usually great at displaying.

Google, for their prank, decided to change the Header on their page to "Topeka" instead of "Google" for the day.



The title at the top left of the page still said Google, the URL still said Google, and given Google's aversion to constantly changing their header, I didn't even give it a second thought when they made the change today.

One of the reasons I personally am a huge fan of Google is because of their creativity. They literally find ways to incorporate anything you ever thought possible into Internet search engines/web hosting.

I am amazed every week as I find new tools to help me here on the blog. For instance, I have access to any number of Traffic reports. From what my views were on any given day, to detailed reports of what percentage of my users are clicking ads, Google has incorporated so many tools into its product that I still haven't figured them all out yet.

Even if you branch out of the technical world, Google's programs have a fun, friendly interface that is quite refreshing (in my opinion). Through Blogger (the Google run program that this website was created through) we were allowed to set-up our own administrative email accounts hosted on Google's servers.*

This has been a constant source of entertainment to me because of the fun dialogue the interface provides. I signed on the other day, and to help me cope with the frustration of having no new mail, Google had a comical little text box saying "No new Messages, our servers are feeling lonely :(" instead of the usual "Inbox: 0".

It's this user friendliness, and technical applicability, that Google amazes me with on an every day basis.

....and this is why I am confused as to why Google would take an opportunity for so much exposure**, and throw up such a lob like this.

Google clearly posses the creative minds to come up with a much better prank than this, but instead of a story that sets the Internet abuzz with discussion, they manage to pull off a prank that almost no one notices.

- Blue Rose

P.S. That's 16 uses of the word "Google" in this article. The word really starts to lose meaning after about 10

* bluerose@s-words.org if you're interested

**Especially with sites like Bing nipping at their heels

A Mini-War With Google

I am really excited about this. Finally, I can spread my ideas across the world through the medium of internet! for free! However, nothing can truely be free, and Google Blogger is no different. You see, Blogger requires a payment of frustration. Allow me to explain.

In order to post, you need an account. Thankfully, since google owns everything important, I can just use the same username I use for GMail, Youtube, etc. and so forth. For some reason, this doesn't work. This is the same user and password I've been using for years. I kept convincing myself I was typing it wrong, and eventually Google grew unhappy with my repeated attemts to log in. And when Google is unhappy, everyone within a 10-mile radius is miserable. Eventually I got this:






What. On. EARTH is that supposed to be? How am I supposed to type That? That's the kind of thing I ask people to call me when I'm on laughing gas. How does that kind of thing get by Google? I understand they need to protect against spambots, but I don't think Enigma could crack that, much less a human. I can't even tell how many letters are supposed to be in that. Just looking at that disturbed me enough to forget about trying to crack my password. So I decide I'll create a new account, where I find...






GAH!

You win this round Google...

-Reach