In the previous years, Google has made it a tradition to pull April fool’s day jokes. This year, Google introduced a new prank on its Gmail. Although things did not work according to their expectation as the prank became a confusion to users.
On the 1st of April, Google introduced the dubbed Mic Drop feature on Gmail. The feature allows users to reply to any email with a ‘Send + Mic Drop button which replaces the former Send + Archive button.
Selecting the Drop the Mic feature on Gmail, the email adds a gif image of a minion character from the popular Despicable me movie.
Through a blog post, Google acknowledged the issue and said, “Well, it looks like we pranked ourselves this year.”
Google also made mention that the feature was attacked by a bug that saw the ‘Mic Drop’ feature as a cause of “more headaches instead of laughter”.
The failed April fool day prank really put alot of users in tight situations. One user on Gmail help forum said,
“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. There were corrections that needed to be made on my articles and I never received her replies. 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 (hence the Mic Drop). I just woke up to a very angry voicemail from her which is how I found out about this ‘hilarious’ prank”
Another user wanted Google to undo the feature, he said
“This sounds like such a joke, but unfortunately it is not. I sent out an important email to 30 recipients and I inadvertently clicked the “Mic Drop” Send. I completely did not mean to [..] Is there any way I can un-do my mic drop feature?”
For the records, Google has pulled lots of great pranks and brought fun out of the April Fools’ Day. But unfortunately, this is the first time the search giant has gotten criticized for such an attempt.