Real April Fool's Day Product Launches
Google has chosen April Fool's Day and the day before it to announce some of their actual products, as a form of viral marketing.
- Shortly before midnight on March 31, 2004, Google announced the launch of Gmail. However, many people believed it was a hoax, because free web-based e-mail with one gigabyte of storage was unheard of at the time.
- In 2005, Google increased Gmail storage to two gigabytes and released Google Ride Finder.
- On March 31, 2010, YouTube implemented its new video page design, which had been revealed two months earlier.
- On April 1, 2010, Google Street View received a new feature to toggle anaglyph 3D images. It was available by clicking on the icon depicting "pegman" wearing a pair of red/cyan glasses. The icon was present until April 8, when it was removed. The 3D view is now available by right-clicking on the image and selecting the 3D mode option or by pressing "T" or "3" on the keyboard. The images are genuine anaglyph images, with the red/cyan offset being greater for closer objects.
Read more about this topic: List Of Google's Hoaxes And Easter Eggs
Famous quotes containing the words real, april, fool, day and/or product:
“The art of using moderate abilities to good advantage is a way of stealing the esteem of others, and often brings a man into greater reputation than does real merit.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“I, Alphonso, live and learn,
Seeing Nature go astern.
Things deteriorate in kind;
Lemons run to leaves and rind;
Meagre crop of figs and limes;
Shorter days and harder times.
Flowering April cools and dies
In the insufficient skies.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Then I said to myself, “What happens to the fool will happen to me also; why then have I been so very wise?” And I said to myself that this also is vanity. For there is no enduring remembrance of the wise or of fools, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How can the wise die just like fools?”
—Bible: Hebrew, Ecclesiastes 2:15-16.
“There is not a more disgusting spectacle under the sun than our subserviency to British criticism. It is disgusting, first, because it is truckling, servile, pusillanimous—secondly, because of its gross irrationality. We know the British to bear us little but ill will—we know that, in no case do they utter unbiased opinions of American books ... we know all this, and yet, day after day, submit our necks to the degrading yoke of the crudest opinion that emanates from the fatherland.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)
“In fast-moving, progress-conscious America, the consumer expects to be dizzied by progress. If he could completely understand advertising jargon he would be badly disappointed. The half-intelligibility which we expect, or even hope, to find in the latest product language personally reassures each of us that progress is being made: that the pace exceeds our ability to follow.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)