Google Gmail joke for April Fools' day backfires

MUMBAI: Google always has a prank ready on April Fool’s day. From launching an intelligence-boosting drink to asking people to post their Google Romance profile to actually launching Gmail with 1GB of storage, convincing people that it had to be a trick, the American technology company has handled its pranks rather well.

But this year, the joke was on the prankster itself. The company’s latest gag ended up angering a large number of users and maybe even cost some people their jobs. This year’s intended prank was a ‘Mic Drop’ button next to the ‘send’ button on Gmail.

A ‘Mic Drop’ is a meme in which someone makes statement and then walks off avoiding any reply. Pressing the ‘Mic Drop’ button added an animated cartoon to the email and muted all replies.

This triggered an outcry on microblogging site Twitter and on Google’s own product forums. “Thanks to Mic Drop, I just lost my job,” Allan Pashby, a user complained on Google’s product forum.

Later in the day, Google undid the feature, but not before it took a severe beating on sites including Twitter, where many people questioned the intelligence of those who thought the prank was a good idea.

“Well, it looks like we pranked ourselves this year. Due to a bug, the Mic Drop feature inadvertently caused more headaches than laughs. We-’re truly sorry. The feature has been turned off,” the company said in a blogpost.