Were you among those puzzled by that extra button saying Mic Drop on Gmail earlier this month? You would know by now that that was an April Fool’s joke by Google that went wrong, with many users complaining that it had had serious consequences for their jobs. It was a special version of the send button which added the gif of a Minion (one of the characters from the Despicable Me series) dressed as the queen dropping a microphone at the end of an email. Clicking on it would essentially end an email thread by muting all future replies to the sender. Google pulled the joke and apologised. A Mic Drop is a gesture expressed through the practice of letting a microphone fall to the ground to signal a victorious performance. It is also used to mark the delivery of what is seen as a definitive and unassailable statement.

Yahoo! also got into trouble on April Fool’s Day this year in the US. It published on one of its Web sites that popular grocery chain Trader Joe’s, with over 400 outlets, was closing down. However, it removed the item after the news led to shock and protests on social media. Luxury British department store Harrods and The Wall Street Journal got involved in a legal tussle over an April Fool’s joke. In 2002, the newspaper had picked up a wire story based on an April Fool’s Day announcement from Harrods that it was selling shares to the public.

Admitting a few days later that it had fallen for the joke, WSJ ran an article headlined “The Enron of Britain?” and said that if Harrods ever went public, “investors would be wise to question its every disclosure.” Harrods sued WSJ for libel but lost the case.

In 1980, the BBC’s overseas service announced that the iconic Big Ben of London would be getting a digital display, and that the clock’s hands would be given away to the first four callers to call the radio station. An official there acknowledged that few people found the prank funny.

Singapore online retailer Honestbee chose a curious way to draw attention to wildlife conservation. At the end of March this year, it announced a sale of meat from endangered animas such as mink, whale, panda and tiger, with delivery date as April Fool’s Day, intending to combine a prank with a cause. However, the attempt boomeranged and the company found itself at the centre of a social media storm even after it withdrew the page by April 1.

Compiled by Sravanthi Challapalli

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