It’s Over: Google Has Already Won April Fool’s Day 2011

It’s not even April 1st in Mountain View, but the April Fool’s Day comedy game is already over and I’m declaring Google the winner. Hiring autocompleters? YouTube 1911? Gmail Motion? Chromercise? Ding, ding, ding and ding. Game over. If you’re planning any big pranks tomorrow, skip it.

Google Hiring Autocompleters

If you search with Google Instant turned on, you’ll see a new link at the bottom of the search suggestions. Google is hiring Autocompleters.

google-hiring-autocompleters

That link leads to a job description with this video introducing “Michael Taylor,” who started out as a spellchecker who typed the “Did you mean?” suggestions and then got a promotion to Autocompleter.

Gmail Motion

Even better is the video for Gmail Motion, a link that shows up on the Gmail login page.

Chromercise

Then there’s the Richard Simmons-esque video for Chromercise, an exercise program that helps your fingers keep up with Chrome’s speed. And yes, there’s a form to “order” a set of those dorky finger sweatbands. (I have no idea if the form is real; probably not, but I did give my name and address. In the name of journalism, of course. The things I do for our readers.)

YouTube 1911

And finally … or at least, it’s the last gag we’ve found tonight … there’s YouTube pretending to be 100 years old with a guest blog post from President Taft and a recap of the Top 5 Viral Videos of 1911.

So that one’s kinda weak, but I say Google hit a home run with the first three. Mrs. McGee was in stitches watching them, so Google passes the “regular person” test with flying colors. They win April Fool’s Day 2011. Well played, Google. Well played.

Postscript: Looks like another gag here, as Google “announces” that it will shift to the Comic Sans font across all web properties on April 4th. Riiiiiight.

A couple more have come in via the comments below (thx!), including “new” old-school display ad formats like “Punch the monkey” and “Click here for smileys.”

And Google UK got its April Fool’s mojo on with Google Translate for Animals, an Android app (not really, duh) that tells you what your pets/animals said in human language.

via searchengineland.com

Google Launches GChat "Talk Guru," an Automated Q&A Service

In the midst of all the Q&A fervor around Quora to Aardvark to Facebook Questions, Google has decided to get in on the act using Gchat.  The striking difference is that Google has completely automated the answers, instead of using a user-wiki system, i.e. waiting until your peers choose to respond with a particular gem of knowledge to a question.   At first glance, it looks like Google has integrated many of their various services, from translation and calculations to definitions to immediate web results, all within the confines of your instant messaging service.  

Now Gchat is my personal favorite IM platform for business or pleasure, and I am much less likely to go to a third-party site if I can get answers quickly on my phone or while in gmail.    Quora and Aardvark will remain useful for abstract or technical questions, and Facebook Questions seems like it will benefit queries of a personal nature, but Google Talk Guru could easily be the fastest and best alternative to questions about everything else!

This is how you get started:

Welcome to Google Talk Guru!

Get started! Send a chat invitation to guru@googlelabs.com.

Google Talk Guru is an experimental service that allows people to get information like sports results, weather forecasts, definitions etc via chat. It works on many popular chat applications that support Google Talk.

To start using Google Talk Guru:

1. Sign into a chat client that supports Google Talk
2. Send a chat invitation to guru@googlelabs.com or click the "Invite myself to chat with Guru" link below.
3. Find guru in your contact list and send chat queries to guru using the examples below:

Sport scores: score arsenal
Weather: weather Nairobi
Calculate: 123 * 45
Currency: 120 KES to USD
Definition: define laptop
Translation: translate earth to French
Web result: web Mount Kenya
Help: help translate

© 2011 Google
via guru.googlelabs.com