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March 31, 2008

Gmail April Fools Not Very Funny. On the Upside, They Started A Wikipedia War

Michael Arrington

81 comments »

Right on schedule: Google is releasing their April Fools jokes onto us as the calendars hit April 1 on the east coast (here’s last year’s efforts). Google Australia got a head start earlier today with the very funny Future Search. Gmail’s effort this year isn’t in my opinion as funny.

Gmail Custom Time lets users send emails with a custom date in the past, putting it in the recipients inbox at the old date:

How do I use it?

Just click “Set custom time” from the Compose view. Any email you send to the past appears in the proper chronological order in your recipient’s inbox. You can opt for it to show up read or unread by selecting the appropriate option.

Is there a limit to how far back I can send email?

Yes. You’ll only be able to send email back until April 1, 2004, the day we launched Gmail. If we were to let you send an email from Gmail before Gmail existed, well, that would be like hanging out with your parents before you were born — crazy talk.

Funny? You decide. The team did better last year in my opinion.

But the joke has started a minor Wikipedia war, which makes it more interesting. In describing the technology Google says “Gmail utilizes an e-flux capacitor to resolve issues of causality (see Grandfather Paradox)” and links to the Grandfather Paradox on Wikipedia. Someone changed the words “time travel” to “gmail” in a revision, along with the comment “Gmail starts a wiki-war by linking directly to this article on April 1st…”

The change was quickly put down by the Wikipedia police, of course. And then changed back. And then reversed. You can watch the drama in real time on the article’s revision history page (or feel free to participate with your own flourishes).

I wonder who’ll get tired first.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Monday, March 31st, 2008 at 10:42 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Marc Fawzi

    March 31st, 2008 at 10:51 pm

    I wonder if there is precedence for use of dated email in court, e.g. for proving that you were the first to come up with some implementation by emailing the implementation to yourself (of course it may be safer to file for a provisional patent) …

    Yikes. Probably not.

  2. Boring Market

    March 31st, 2008 at 10:54 pm

    Oh how the internet ruins April fools.

    Bloggers are liars….or really good storytellers.

  3. Mystery CEO

    March 31st, 2008 at 11:14 pm

    I just caught this and stared at it for 2 minutes scratching my head till I realized it was April 1…not very funny, last year was pretty good.

  4. Sundar

    March 31st, 2008 at 11:16 pm

    I was eagerly waiting for the Google’s April Fool app. But this one wasn’t that funny/creative as last years Paper Archive joke…

    Better luck next year.

  5. GDrive?

    March 31st, 2008 at 11:16 pm

    Where’s GDrive, this year?

  6. Joke Cricket

    March 31st, 2008 at 11:20 pm

    now this one is/was really cool.

  7. rijul

    March 31st, 2008 at 11:34 pm

    you could’ve gotten away with linking everyone to the revision history for rick roll or richard astley. 0/10

  8. Evan

    March 31st, 2008 at 11:47 pm

    Indeed, I liked GMail Paper a lot better… this one is lacking.

    http://evansnyder.com

  9. Chris

    March 31st, 2008 at 11:48 pm

    Keep looking. Google is allllll over the board with pranks this year. Virgle. This one. Youtube is rick rolling everyone on their front page recommended vids. I’m sure we’ll find more.

  10. RK

    March 31st, 2008 at 11:55 pm

    what a yawn!!

    rk
    http://theindiastockmarket.blogspot.com/

  11. mei

    March 31st, 2008 at 11:59 pm

    i was actually pretty frustrated…this is actually one feature that actually might be useful…to me…

  12. Alexandre

    April 1st, 2008 at 12:43 am

    I personally like this Custom Time one. Partly because it’s a bit closer to being believable than many others. And partly because it isn’t about a buyout, merger, or employee change. Virgle? Yawn. Custom Time, with an epistemology professor complaining? Almost as insightful as The Onion.

  13. ineedhits Australia

    April 1st, 2008 at 1:03 am

    Just a quick question, do you tag all these april fools jokes? just so we can look back on all these posts next year.. ?

  14. Piyush

    April 1st, 2008 at 1:22 am

    For April fool, Google’s orkut also changed their logo to ‘yogurt’ which can only be seen one you log into it.

    Screenshot:
    http://wastedmonkeys.files.wor.....yogurt.jpg

  15. micfo.com

    April 1st, 2008 at 2:32 am

    The last year effort was good for Google TiSP. :)

  16. Tal

    April 1st, 2008 at 2:58 am

    Here’s another one from google:
    http://www.google.com/googleca.....akeup.html

  17. greenspam

    April 1st, 2008 at 4:34 am

    We just did federal discovery using thousands of ~ when I saw this, oh, the drama …

  18. greenspam

    April 1st, 2008 at 4:34 am

    We just did federal discovery using thousands of emails ~ when I saw this, oh, the drama …

  19. Christy

    April 1st, 2008 at 4:56 am

    LMFAO….. I figured it all out real quick.. i was looking around online for a page that said it was an april fools joke.. LOL!!!!! Hahahahaha.. too funny!

  20. Chip

    April 1st, 2008 at 5:45 am

    Really, not that funny, and more than a little irksome. At first glance I thought it was about allowing scheduling emails for future sending, a feature gmail sadly lacks.

  21. AC

    April 1st, 2008 at 6:43 am

    All it’s going to take is one person to semi-protect the proper pages and the wikiwar ends.

  22. Larry Larrikin

    April 1st, 2008 at 7:24 am

    But the CNET one was pretty hilarious!

  23. CFA Level 1

    April 1st, 2008 at 8:12 am

    These ‘wiki wars’ are such a waste of time

  24. J Man

    April 1st, 2008 at 8:14 am

    I thought this was alot funnier than last years… who could have believed last years?? I am sure quite a few will fall for this year’s (if only because of wishful thinking lol)

  25. Pant Suprise

    April 1st, 2008 at 8:20 am

    lol this sounds so lame.

  26. The Dude

    April 1st, 2008 at 8:28 am

    I thought this was pretty funny :) Not great though. The really good ones are when I actually think it might be true… They’ve done that to me before, but I don’t remember when.

  27. D Legal

    April 1st, 2008 at 8:36 am

    This would actually be very handy; I know I could have used this feature many times in the past few years.

  28. Marco

    April 1st, 2008 at 8:50 am

    It would be funnier if they implemented the feature (but only for today) so Gmail users could play April Fools jokes on friends.

    It wouldn’t be difficult from a technical standpoint. We used to spoof dates and other header records for practical jokes back in the days of open relays.

  29. cd

    April 1st, 2008 at 8:54 am

    SNL used the exact same joke for one of their spoof commercials 10+ years ago. It was for a FedEx / UPS type service… if you need it there tomorrow, use the other guys…but if you needed it there yesterday, use us, etc etc.

  30. Svavar

    April 1st, 2008 at 8:55 am

    The irony is that this is actually possible. I get spam all the time that appears to have been sent in the past (often years ago).

  31. Michael Arrington

    April 1st, 2008 at 8:58 am

    the wikipedia article is out of control.

    “Let’s try full protection for the remainder of the day.”

    http://en.wikipedia.org/w/inde.....on=history

  32. Travis

    April 1st, 2008 at 9:02 am

    I thought this was hilarious, once I realized it was April 1st. Totally got me, but apparently that isn’t very difficult.

  33. Gordon

    April 1st, 2008 at 9:29 am

    ‘hi-hi’ funny, not ‘ha-ha’ funny.

  34. Greg

    April 1st, 2008 at 9:33 am

    Well, I think it’s funny.

    Not a really great prank by itself, but think of this as an enabler for other people to pull their own email-based pranks.

    It’s a meta-prank, and it’s brilliant. Also, everyone on Wikipedia is way too serious and kind of grating anyway, so it’s good to see them get wrapped up in this.

  35. nigel

    April 1st, 2008 at 9:58 am

    Finally a funny April fools day prank. I don’t see what all you babies are crying about.

  36. sldkfjie

    April 1st, 2008 at 10:11 am

    Oh, it is funny-lighten up!

  37. JM

    April 1st, 2008 at 10:14 am

    It’s was funnier than yours, find some real content to write about…. yawn….

  38. Igor The Troll

    April 1st, 2008 at 11:08 am

    Okay guys! Next year let’s nominate Wikipedia Main page for deletion. Then have an admin delete the page and protect it from editing for one day!

    That will be the wildest April Fool’s Joke!

    The Wikipedian Police will have a Heart Attack..:)

  39. washington

    April 1st, 2008 at 11:25 am

    Surprised this article got Dugg. Random blogger thinks April Fools joke is unfunny? Woop-di-doo.

    My cat can eat a whole watermelon, what do you think of that?

  40. Andy Davies

    April 1st, 2008 at 12:02 pm

    Yeh, your April Fool was almost as funny as this…

  41. DB

    April 1st, 2008 at 12:40 pm

    OBAMA IS GREAT!!!

    APRIL FOOOLS

  42. Kiki

    April 1st, 2008 at 1:30 pm

    As innovative and as geek as gmail staff is, I absolutely fell for it for about 4 minutes. And then it made my day. Best Joke of the day! LOL
    A couple others such as insideredbox did an awful job at April fool’s joke though.

  43. me

    April 1st, 2008 at 1:55 pm

    At least there is still virgle

  44. Dan

    April 1st, 2008 at 2:05 pm

    Google linked to a Wikipedia page. How is this news?

    Someone edited a Wikipedia page. How is this news?

    Does anyone think this is interesting?

  45. Jim

    April 1st, 2008 at 2:09 pm

    Okay, sure, it’s not as funny as last year. But the user testimonials down the right hand side of the page were great.

  46. Goon

    April 1st, 2008 at 2:25 pm

    I actually thought it was pretty funny.

  47. Kelson

    April 1st, 2008 at 4:13 pm

    Sure, changing the date header is completely believable. Spammers do it semi-regularly (though I suspect it’s usually misconfiguration).

    It would be easy for someone who knew what they were doing to spot it, though, by looking at the full headers and the timestamps on the Received lines. Unless it was gmail-to-gmail and Google was *very* thorough about forging the dates!

  48. Evan

    April 1st, 2008 at 4:21 pm

    From Above: “My cat can eat a whole watermelon, what do you think of that?”

    That’s hilarious, Prove IT.

    http://evansnyder.com

  49. Cyde Weys

    April 1st, 2008 at 4:54 pm

    I would hardly call this a “Wikipedia war”. We see a lot more reversions on various controversial articles on a daily basis. This doesn’t even touch what Stephen Colbert did.

  50. vutt

    April 1st, 2008 at 6:04 pm

    http://www.metalglassfurniture.com
    The change was quickly put down by the Wikipedia police, of course. And then changed back. And then reversed. You can watch the drama in real time on the article’s metal glass

  51. Handan Daily

    April 1st, 2008 at 6:12 pm

    I actually thought it was pretty funny.

  52. Lady

    April 1st, 2008 at 6:30 pm

    This was not funny, I’ve spent the last 10 min trying to figure out why it wasnt showing up on my compose page. I could have really used that feature for a paper that’s due today

  53. Jd

    April 1st, 2008 at 6:47 pm

    funny? well, not knee-slappingly hilarious to begin with…

    but with these idiots in an uproar, HILARIOUS.

    lighten up morons.

  54. Jd

    April 1st, 2008 at 6:48 pm

    Lady - are you an idiot? blaming the time you should have spent working on a paper on google?

  55. nabin

    April 1st, 2008 at 8:30 pm

    The idea is not so funny for april fool’s day.
    Blogged!!!
    http://ajabgajab.blogspot.com/.....gmail.html

  56. Jagat

    April 2nd, 2008 at 12:16 am

    Nice!!

  57. Silent Spectator

    April 2nd, 2008 at 12:46 am

    Yawn…. Booooring! I expected much better from google. The standard of their jokes are horribly sliding down. :(

  58. Telkom

    April 2nd, 2008 at 2:36 am

    lol is everyone from MySpace now using Wikipedia as well? :P

  59. Chris

    April 2nd, 2008 at 5:50 am

    Wikipedia mods are arseholes anyway. I reckon we trash the page for the hell of it.

  60. Ray Rivera

    April 2nd, 2008 at 8:45 am

    Lighten up grouches. I guess no one has a grandmother that forgets anything.

  61. Steffan Antonas

    April 2nd, 2008 at 11:23 am

    Here’s my little analysis of the not-so-outside-the-box Gmail spoof.

  62. Bob Nostar

    April 6th, 2008 at 10:33 am

    It’s the worst April fools joke EVER!!!

  63. Bob Nostar

    April 6th, 2008 at 10:34 am

    worst april fools joke

  64. David Smith

    April 8th, 2008 at 3:08 am

    This one was believable because I receive Spam all the time with post-dated timestamps (and occasionally with pre-dated time stamps). So, it’s already being done by someone.

  65. Sue

    April 15th, 2008 at 7:04 am

    I thought this was bad, not funny.

  66. Abhishek

    April 27th, 2008 at 7:28 am

    Another lame attempt by google to pwn users. To be frank, I saw right through it immediately as I have learned from google’s antics of trying to fool its users in the past. Abhishek http://www.dibugs.com

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