Top 6 Google pranks

Happy April 1st everyone! As you know, it’s always a wild day on the web. For instance, YouTube rolled out a feature today called “text only”, which converts all videos into ASCII style animations. “By using text-only mode, you are saving YouTube $1 a second in bandwidth costs” they say. Right. But who cares, because the effect achieved is gorgeous. “Just click the TEXTp resolution in the bottom right corner of a supported video, and it’ll be shown as a pulsating, hypnotizing square of stylized digital pointillism” says Gizmodo.
But the most famous virtual pranks are probably Google’s, and we decided to round them up in a list for your geeky pleasure.

6. The Mentalplex

This is Google’s first prank, released in 2001. Unlike regular search engines that require you to type a query to conduct a search, MentalPlex search anticipates your request by evaluating over 1.3 billion variables including the last 5 sites you visited before coming to Google, current air pressure, humidity and ozone content, astrological configuration at the time of your visit, speed and vectors of your mouse movement and personal aura and brainwave activity.

5. Virgle

The only reason Virgle isn’t number one is because it should be reality, not a prank. Virgle is Google’s and Virgin’s mutual plan to colonize Mars within 100 years, while traveling on a ship controlled by a super computer involving “HolisticArtificial Language interface visually mediated by a glowing red light.” Why the hell not?

4. Gmail Paper

Gmail Paper was a good-natured Google poke at people who print email messages out to read them. The fake service claimed it would print out Gmail messages with unobtrusive ads to cover the cost of postage. From the Gmail Paper website:

Is it free?
Yes. The cost of postage is offset with the help of relevant, targeted, unobtrusive advertisements, which will appear on the back of your Gmail Paper prints in red, bold, 36 pt Helvetica. No pop-ups, no flashy animations—these are physically impossible in the paper medium.
How about attachments?
All part of the deal. Photo attachments are printed on high-quality, glossy photo paper, and secured to your Gmail Paper with a paper clip. MP3 and WAV files will not be printed. We recommend maintaining copies of your non-paper Gmail in these cases.
Is there a limit?
You can make us print one, one thousand, or one hundred thousand of your emails. It’s whatever seems reasonable to you.
But what about the environment?
Not a problem. Gmail Paper is made out of 96% post-consumer organic soybean sputum, and thus, actually helps the environment. For every Gmail Paper we produce, the environment gets incrementally healthier.

3. Google TiSP system

Toilet Internet Service Provider (TiSP), a fictitious free broadband service that would make use of a standard toilet and sewage lines to provide free Internet access. Check out Google’s TiSP website.

2. Google Romance

This idea is genius. After all, Google knows more about its users than any other web service, right? They scan our email, archive our search history, manage our pictures, provide us with video, host our blogs, run our smartphones and even analyse our DNA. Instead of turning into the real world equivalent of Big Brother, they could incarnate Cupid, and do a pretty good job at it. Google Romance was Google’s 2006 prank. It claimed to be a new Google dating service which would let users experience a free date peppered with unobtrusive contextual advertising. This parodies Google AdSense, which displays contextual advertising.

1. Google Copernicus Center

Google claimed they were hiring for a job center on the moon in 2007. Wait, so not only you do get to work for Google, but you’re also on the moon? My idea of paradise. The Google Copernicus Hosting Environment and Experiment in Search Engineering (G.C.H.E.E.S.E.), as depicted in the thumbnail, is a fully integrated research, development and technology facility at which Google will be conducting experiments in entropized information filtering, high-density high-delivery hosting (HiDeHiDeHo) and de-oxygenated cubicle dwelling. This center will provide a unique platform from which Google will leapfrog current terrestrial-based technologies and bring information access to new heights of utility.

But what about this year?

Well, Google did two things: It renamed itself to Topeka, which left me and apparently TechCrunch unimpressed:

“Google Topeka? Not so funny. They’ve changed their logo on the Google homepage to Topeka and give this link as an explanation. They’ve changed their corporate name, they say, to Topeka for the day.
The problem is the whole joke is really just a way to promote Google’s experimental fiber network. 1,100 cities are begging to be part of the program and doing crazy things, like renaming their city name to Google, to get picked. Anyway, if you’re promoting your own stuff on April Fools you need to be extra funny. This isn’t extra funny.”

But Google UK saved the day: