IN CASE YOU didn’t realise, today is 1 April which means every major company in existence has unleashed their own joke product or idea into the world.
Google is no exception, having a tradition of coming up with overly silly jokes for the day. This year, it decided to add a Send + Drop mic option for Gmail, which adds a minion GIF to any email you send. But instead of just saying it was an idea, it added it as a real feature for today.
So anytime somebody used it, this GIF would appear at the top.
“Everyone will get your message, but that’s the last you’ll ever hear about it. Yes, even if folks try to respond, you won’t see it” it said in a post announcing the feature.
Not only did it close conversations, it replaced the Send + Archive button, an important button for those who want to close email threads and save it in their records.
As a result, people have been flooding Gmail’s help forum complaining about the feature and asking Google how to turn it off. What made things worse was a bug meant that the GIF would be added when the person just presses the Send button.
Designer Andy Biao, who spotted the problems with the joke, did a mockup of the worst case scenario, but it wasn’t far off from what some people are experiencing.
Of the many complaints about the button, one person explained how they’ve accidentally sent an important email to 30 people without realising the button had changed.
I sent out an important email to 30 recipients and I inadvertently clicked the “Mic Drop” Send. I completely did not mean to, and I realized what had happened after the fact.Yes, it’s a funny April Fools’ joke, but not when it’s actually screwing up my important email correspondences…
While another person said he ended up losing his job because of the April Fools’ joke.
Thanks to Mic Drop I just lost my job. I am a writer and had a deadline to meet. I sent my articles to my boss and never heard back from her. I inadvertently sent the email using the “Mic Drop” send button. There were corrections that needed to be made on my articles and I never received her replies.
My boss took offense to the Mic Drop animation and assumed that I didn’t reply to her because I thought her input was petty (hence the Mic Drop). I just woke up to a very angry voicemail from her which is how I found out about this “hilarious” prank
Google has removed the button and apologised for the joke.
Well, it looks like we pranked ourselves this year. Due to a bug, the Mic Drop feature inadvertently caused more headaches than laughs. We’re truly sorry. The feature has been turned off. If you are still seeing it, please reload your Gmail page.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say