Welcome to April Fools’ Day, where you shouldn’t believe anything you read on the Internet. Except this post, obviously. Anyway, most people couldn’t fool their mother on the foolingest day of their life if they had an electrified fooling machine, but not Google — the web engine’s April Fools’ Day “joke” was a little too successful. It even reportedly cost people their jobs. Ha?
Last night, Google introduced Mic Drop.
Email’s great, but sometimes you just wanna hit the eject button. Like those heated threads at work, when everyone’s wrong except you (obviously). Or those times when someone’s seeking group approval, but your opinion is the only one that matters (amirite?). Or maybe you just nailed it, and there’s nothing more to say (bam). (Via)
Gmail subscribers could reply to any email using the “Send + Mic Drop” button. “Everyone will get your message,” Google boasted, “but that’s the last you’ll hear about it. Even if folks try to respond, you won’t see it.” The actual mic drop GIF was from Minions, which should have been Google’s first clue that this was going to be a disaster. According to the Verge, the feature replaced the useful “send and archive” button, and “bugs were also reported that saw people send the GIF even when using the regular ‘send’ option.”
It backfired in a hurry.
WHAT A HARMLESS APRIL FOOL'S JOKE, WHAT COULD GO WRONG pic.twitter.com/Maw8a6VUSA
— Andy Baio (@waxpancake) April 1, 2016
And just as quickly, Google deleted the function. But the damage had been done. Allan Pashby wrote that “thanks to Mic Drop, I just lost my job… I am a writer and had a deadline to meet. I sent my articles to my boss and never heard back from her. I inadvertently sent the email using the “Mic Drop” send button… My boss took offense to the Mic Drop animation and assumed that I didn’t reply to her because I thought her input was petty.” Another user, via Business Insider, added, “I just sent off an email with my resume to the first person who wanted to interview me in months… I clicked the wrong button and sent it with the mic drop. Well, I guess I’m not getting that job.”
Of course, maybe Google wanted Mic Drop to crash and burn, and its failure is the actual April Fools’ Day joke. In which case:
Well played, Google. (I hate today.)
(Via the Verge)