While today is April Fools’ Day, Google has decided to cancel their yearly jokes due to COVID-19. Every year on April Fools’ Day, Google would pull pranks such as putting Where’s Waldo in Google Maps and having a mic drop button on Gmail. Since people are using and relying on Google to get information about the current pandemic, Google is not participating in April Fools’ Day this year. Google’s head of marketing, Lorraine Twohill stated, “Our highest goal right now is to be helpful to people, so let’s save the jokes for next April, which will be a whole lot brighter than this one.”

Here is a list of 6 of the past pranks pulled by Google on April Fools’ Day

2000- MentalPlex – Projects a mental image of what they wanted while staring at an animated GIF

2004- Job Opportunities – Jobs at a research center on the moon

2005- Google Gulp-  A fictitious drink (that came in 4 flavors) that increases the drinker’s intelligence

2006- Google Romance – A parody of online dating

2007- Gmail Paper – Archive emails which would then print on soybean sputum and mail via traditional post

2008- Book Scratch and Sniff – Users asked to place their nose near the monitor to smell their book

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_April_Fools%27_Day_jokes