Google pranks users with new features

Syafique Shuib
April 1, 2013 15:34 MYT
If it’s April 1st, it’s definitely April Fools’ Day.
One notable brand that has been at the forefront of this tradition is Google. For the last few hours, they’ve unveiled the Google Nose Beta and Gmail Blue. Google-owned YouTube, the famous video sharing platform, also gave its fans some major news!
Here’s a recap of some of the pranks by Google:
Google Nose Beta
The search engine giant has launched the Google Nose Beta, that allows users to search and sniff things like “cookies”, “unattended litter box”, “jeans in the rain” and “printed paper” just to name a few.
"Google Search is incredibly powerful, and you can search for text across the Internet, most of human knowledge, images, books, videos, but we realized there was an important part of the search experience we'd overlooked," product manager Jon Wooly said in a video posted on the Google Nose Beta page.
The ‘Google Nose Beta’ link is available at the results page. Once clicked, users will be brought to a web page explaining about the ‘new’ application from Google. By clicking the ‘Try Google Nose Beta’ link, users will be brought back to the results page, with a list of items that are available for ‘sniffing’ at the right-side of the page. Users are also able to share the different aromas with their friends via Google+.
Check out the video below:
Gmail Blue
Google's developers has reportedly spend six years to develop an email with a single theme colour: blue.
The buttons, texts and links all blue.
"It's Gmail, only bluer!" project manager Richard Pargo said in a video post.
YouTube
A video was uploaded on Sunday telling users of the popular video-sharing website that it is temporarily shutting down its website for a decade.
The purpose of the shutting down was for the people from YouTube to go through all uploaded videos and pick the best video in the world by year 2023.
"30,000 technicians... will sift through all the clips, and a winner will be announced when the website goes back online in 2023," said a staged actor playing the role of a YouTube competition director.
YouTube CEO Salar Kamangar also made an appearance in the video.
#April Fools prank #Gmail Blue #Google #Google Nose Beta #YouTube
;