Every year on this day, Internet companies’ April Fools’ Day “jokes”

Playing a joke on April Fool's Day has almost become a compulsory course for Internet companies. Not only foreign companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube (sorry, I shouldn't mention sad things, many people can't access these websites), but also many companies including BAT will come up with some creative ideas on April Fool's Day.

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On April 1, 2000, Google launched a search service called "The MentalPlex". This service claimed that users did not need to enter anything in the search box, but only needed to stare at the rotating MentalPlex Circle on the screen to search. This joke caused a sensation at the time, and also planted the seeds for Chinese Internet companies to come up with an April Fool's Day idea. Since then, Google, as an April Fool's Day expert, has made no less than a hundred jokes.

Because of this, playing a joke on April Fools’ Day has almost become a compulsory course for Internet companies. Not only foreign companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube (sorry, I shouldn’t mention sad things, many people can’t access these websites), but also many companies including BAT will come up with some creative ideas and play one or more jokes on April Fools’ Day.

Although the Internet was not the first industry to play a joke on April Fools' Day as a company - on April 1, 1996, the Taco Bell fast food chain announced that it had bought the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, a symbol of the American War of Independence and the Black Liberation Movement, in order to reduce the U.S. debt and renamed it the "Taco Liberty Bell" - it is undeniable that Internet companies are the ones that benefit the most from April Fools' Day.

Unlike traditional fast-moving consumer goods and catering industries, most traditional companies play jokes on April Fools' Day to attract attention and conduct "creative" advertising. In the Internet industry, April Fools' Day jokes are likely to boost stock market growth. After all, the latter is more "technical", but when a certain technology cannot clearly see the commercial prospects, April Fools' Day is the best platform - you don't have to feel guilty about the products you developed with immature technology, and you can show the future and attract the attention of the capital market. This is similar to the recent exciting match between AlphaGo and Lee Sedol. After AlphaGo defeated Lee Sedol, Google's stock rose by 20 billion US dollars.

Of course, it is not so easy for Internet companies to play a joke on April Fools' Day. The most important thing is to be able to fool others, you have to make them believe, and the premise is that you have to have a basis for others to believe - the true meaning of April Fools' Day is to fool people before 12 o'clock and announce the answer after 12 o'clock. If you can't fool others on April Fools' Day, but just come out to make up the numbers and play tricks, it can only be a self-indulgent "April Fools' Day".

For example, Google posted a recruitment advertisement for lunar employees on April Fool's Day in 2004, saying that it would recruit employees to work on the moon as part of the "Google Copernicus Virtual Hosting Environment and Search Engineering Experiment" (GCHEESE) program. This deceived many people at the time because Google had previously announced a similar "moon exploration program" and given Google's technical strength, this view was easy to be believed. This is a typical "technical liar"!

For a while, the topic of "April Fools' Day jokes come true" was very popular in the Internet circle, claiming that not all jokes are just jokes. In other words, many companies' products launched on April Fools' Day have become reality. In fact, this can be regarded as the early realization of technology.

There are many companies that don’t play with technology, but with “confidence”. For example, Twitter once claimed in 2013 that it would implement a plan: unless users pay a monthly fee of $5, they will be prohibited from posting tweets with the five vowels of a, e, i, o and u. Twitter “generously” classified y as a non-vowel and allowed users to use it for free; and Google also released a video in the same year announcing that its famous video sharing website YouTube would be officially shut down on April 1. “Well, I really can afford it.”

In China, many Internet companies are also very "hard-working" in coming up with similar April Fools' Day jokes. Although some of the jokes are "fake", like Tencent's move of its headquarters to Antarctica on April Fools' Day last year, which has a clear "company KPI" flavor, it does not prevent some April Fools' Day jokes from being very good, such as Baidu's "Kuaisou Search" and "Animal Translation", etc. This series is quite interesting.

Frankly speaking, among Chinese Internet companies, Baidu is the most enthusiastic about April Fools' Day, while Alibaba is relatively mediocre and Tencent is the least creative. This is actually related to the culture that these three companies advocate. Baidu's "engineer culture" naturally requires some feelings and dreams; Tencent... well, it has been low-key and pragmatic for 10,000 years, and it may not have thought that doing something interesting and innovative on April Fools' Day can slowly remove the hat of plagiarism, but... I'm afraid it won't invest too much energy in doing these things that are not related to KPI.

As for Alibaba, with Jack Ma's "deceitful" spirit, Alibaba is very well placed to do something, but it has not done it yet. I'm afraid they are worried that after all, e-commerce has more contact with traditional businesses, and making an "excessive" joke may cause panic among the people...

It is hard to imagine what would happen if the Taco Bell joke happened in China. You know, at that time, the joke of Taco Bell buying the Liberty Bell caused the National Park Service to receive thousands of calls, and the government had to hold a press conference to clarify the incident. If it happened in China, I am afraid...

I don’t want to discuss here how terrifying it is to have a nation without a sense of humor, but deep down in my heart, I still hope that this April Fool’s Day, domestic Internet companies can try to make more “jokes”. Even if they can’t fool everyone, at least let everyone see the joke.

After all, something bad is better than nothing.