This is What’s Trending Today…
Friday was April Fools’ Day. Google’s search engine has become famous for its April Fools' tricks over the years.
This year, however, one trick Google played did not have many people laughing.
The company added a button to its email service, Gmail. The button enabled users to send out a GIF of a minion. Minions first appeared in the 2010 movie “Despicable Me.”
The small, yellow creatures starred in their own film last year.
In Google’s GIF, a minion dropped a microphone. The GIF was meant to be a humorous, “end of discussion” comeback to long email messages.
Sending the minion GIF would then mute - or silence the alert sound - for future messages. The “send” button for the minion was placed next to Gmail’s normal blue “send” button.
The service soon received messages from angry users. Many had accidentally added the minion GIF to important business messages to their employer and co-workers.
People also commented on social media about the not-so-funny April Fools' trick.
Google Inc. apologized and cancelled the minion feature. The company said that because of a technical problem, the GIF “caused more headaches than laughs.”
But not all of Google’s April Fools' jokes caused anger. Some were more light-hearted.
Google Nederlands, for example, posted a video of the company’s new self-driving bicycles. The video says that people could get work done while riding a bicycle. It adds that young children could go anywhere they want on a self-driving bicycle.
The video was a play on the company’s self-driving cars.
And that’s What’s Trending Today.
I’m Lucija Millonig.
_______________________________________________________________
Words in This Story
GIF - n. short for Graphics Interchange Format
microphone - n. a device into which people speak to record their voices or to make them sound louder
mute - v. to make (something, such as a television) silent
