Don't Let Google Fool Ya

Set your clocks. When April 1 rolls around each year you can bet those wacky kids at Google have a few things up their sleeve.

Last year Google turned your love life into an algorithmically solvable search problem. This year it's teamed up with Virgin to give us Virgle: the adventure of not one, but many lifetimes.

Apply to become a Virgle pioneer and you could win a coveted slot on a ship to Mars. It will be dangerous. It will be uncomfortable. It will be unnecessarily expensive. "But your enriched descendants will appreciate your sacrifice, which should render worthwhile your choice to spend the rest of your (perhaps radically foreshortened) life in deprivation and uncertainty," Virgle assures you.

Save scoffs for tomorrow. Google released Gmail on April Fool's Day, and it's changed the way we email. Think about that.

Free In-home WiFi from Google!!!

Ah yes. Check your calendar today and you can bet Google will be promoting something so cool it just can't be true. Who wouldn't want free in-home wireless broadband? But don't flush or you may be kicked off line. Huh?

APRIL FOOLS!!

Each year, like clockwork, Google teases us with "interesting" products and services. (Who could forget "Google Gulp" from '05?) Some people believe them - like my friend Susan who sent me that link this morning. But Google gets the last laugh in the end with endless publicity and a sense of being a fun-loving company (but we already knew that).

This one was pretty funny. The "Google TiSP (BETA)" introduced The Toilet Internet Service Provider (TiSP) project - "a self-installed, ad-supported online service that will be offered entirely free to any consumer with a WiFi-capable PC and a toilet connected to a local municipal sewage system. " The joke even included a press release.

The web is no stranger to April Fool pranks. Here's an on-going list.