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April 1st has long been a spectacular day to be alive, with brands that turned out to be "funny" and generally turned out to be something else. It was almost tolerable at the time when we were just talking about fake advertisements in the print media, but that takes on a new dimension online because companies have actually changed the services we rely on every day to try to be "funny".
This was particularly striking in the Google Drop feature of Google 2016 on Gmail, where a click on the "Mic Drop" button sent a recipient a gif of Despicable Me minion – a vile affront to humanity itself – then cut and archived the conversation, hiding any response to this conversation. Report widespread complaints from users who have clicked the button by accident, refusing jobs and offending their bosses.
Microsoft, for one, does not want to be part of it. Chris Capossela, Microsoft Marketing Director, then sent an e-mail to the entire company (which was leaked to Verge), inviting staff to refrain from creating stunts for the day of the April fish. Capossela writes that, according to the company's data, the cascades have "a limited positive impact" and may result in "unwanted information cycles".
Although Microsoft has so far avoided all Gmail debacles, like April Fools – preferring jokes like the "MS-DOS for Phones" app from 2015, it's clear that Capossela wants to avoid any risk of tarnishing unnecessarily the image of the company.
Now, we can only hope that all the other brands will follow suit and will try to give us a 1st of April that goes on like every day.
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