2015 April Fool's Day

Background

On April 1st, 2015, various websites and online services released gag videos, products and features in honor of April Fool’s Day.

Notable Examples

Google Pranks

Keeping up with their annual tradition, Google unveiled several gag products across many of its platforms. A Pac-Man mode was released for Google Maps,^[1] allowing users to play a modified version of the arcade game using streets as custom playable levels (shown below, left). The Google.com search was horizontally flipped as if it were being read in a mirror (shown below, right).

A promotional video for the gag product “Smartbox,” a physical mailbox that is connected to a Google account, was uploaded to YouTube (shown below, left). The Google Fiber team released a parody promotional video for a fake dial-up Internet service (shown below, right).

In the mobile version of the Chrome web browser, Google unveiled the “#Chromeselfie” button, allowing users to take reaction selfie photographs while browsing the Internet with their mobile devices (shown below, left). On YouTube, a music button was added to video pages which plays a sample of the song “Sandstorm” by Darude (shown below, right).

Reddit’s “The Button”

Reddit unveiled the /r/thebutton^[2] subreddit, featuring an interactive button that counts down from 60 seconds. If the button is clicked, the counter would reset and could only be clicked once by accounts created prior to April 1st, 2015.

Amazon Dash and Retro Homepage

On March 31st, Amazon released a promotional video for the Amazon Dash electronic device, which allows users to order replacement household items by pressing a button on a Wi-Fi connected device (shown below). While many speculated it was an April Fools Day joke, the company insisted it was a real product.

On April Fools Day, Amazon updated their homepage with a retro theme based on the site’s design from 1999, which would revert to the current website when clicked (shown below).

LinkedIn Magic Mirror

LinkedIn published a blog post^[3] announcing the “Magic Mirror” gag service, which reveals the secret career goals in a user’s profile photo (shown below).

Samsung Galaxy BLADE Edge

The consumer electronics company Samsung announced the gag product Galaxy BLADE Edge,^[5] a smart phone so thin it can serve as a cooking knife (shown below).

#DomiNoDriver

The Domino’s pizza delivery company announced it would be rolling out a fleet of driverless drone delivery vehicles (shown below).^[4]

Uber Car Shop and Uber Boat

Uber released a fake promotional video for a product catalog filled with gag items available to purchase while riding in an Uber taxi (shown below).

Additionally, Uber^[6] announced the launch of the UberBOAT service in Thailand, which would provide boat taxis on the streets on Bangkok.

Hulu Pets

Hulu introduced a new collection titled "Hulu Pets, providing video content aimed at entertaining household pets, including the parody shows Clawed City, The Real Pugs of Portland, The Bark and Bone Appetit.

CERN Confirms Existence of the Force

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)^[7] reported that researchers at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) had discovered evidence for the “Force” energy field from the Star Wars franchise.